Skip to main content

[3 Jun] Humanities Department Meeting

CONNECT

One thing that connected with me today was definitely the benefits of Inquiry-Based Learning. Compared to the earlier years of implementation, I feel that at least right now, the learners do not have as much inertia towards asking questions compared to the generations before.

It is in a way, a habit that had to be formed in their formative years, so that they may continue to more sophisticated levels of questioning at the secondary school level. 

When they become curious enough to want to find out more, there is motivation to want to search for the answers. The unknown becomes an exciting notion that ought to be solved, and the process to working together to find the answers becomes an interesting one.

Having gone through it first-hand, they can then better retain the learnt knowledge to memory. If sufficient interest is generated, it may even deepen learning. 

EXTEND

To some extent, IBL also brings back our last few discussions on metacognition. As we plan for the various forms of IBL, we are in fact trying to encourage the students to practise the active thinking processes in order to direct their learning experiences.












To be honest, like many teachers, I always stayed within the safer boundaries of Confirmation and Structured Inquiry.

Earlier in Term 2, when I redesigned the Sec 3 Weather GI, one of my main aims was to make it more 'exploratory' and 'open' based on the feedback last given to us by our AST and ETD colleagues in the previous year. With the refinement suggestions by the team, we rolled out a Guided Inquiry for our Sec 3 EG students,

'How do weather conditions affect the conduciveness of learning environments in AES?'

Based on our sharing of classroom experiences during team sharing, it would appear that 

1. The kids enjoyed discussing with their groupmates (some even arguing over) what makes a better indicator. I heard my 3NA trying to define 'conducive' based on their prior knowledge, and what it would mean/what they should observe as a result. (I felt like there was constructive chaos in their discussions, and Cheralyn who also administered the GI package to sec 3s last year, made a comparison of how this year's batch seemed to be having more fun).

2. We had a HUGE range of hypotheses and methods (including counting the number of students sleeping/nodding off as a data collection method to determine 'conduciveness' of learning environments in school).

3. We still managed to grade the varied responses at each stage of their investigation, and I would say that in the spirit of fieldwork, the learning experience was not compromised just because we did not specify the methods like we usually do.

It took a few rounds of planning, discussion and refinements, but it was worth it.

CHALLENGE

A challenge that remained was, how to differentiate further. 

Another observation we made after conclusion of the GI was that the score difference was not great across 3E classes (for that matter, within 3NA cohort too). 

How can we award 'better' hypothesis, more reliable data/research methods, and more insightful/relevant conclusions? (Perhaps not for the 3NA who may not be ready yet, but for the more metacognitively ready 3E students?)

Would it be mere refinement of rubrics to cater to such evidence in learning? Something to continue reading up and trialling on. Being able to award credit fairly and reliably for higher order thinking, it will also be a way for us to clarify our paths towards self-directed learning of the students by encouraging the students to continue thinking about what they are thinking.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ExCEL Fest Live: Empowering Students in Geographical Investigation through Virtual Reality Technology (A Sharing by Theophilia Yong / Teck Whye Sec)

 Sharing a series of screengrabs from the presenter's sharing, just to give an idea of how the GI was constructed. CoSpaces allows students to upload 360 environment photos and then drag and drop characters/elements to create 'scenes'. Presenter's suggestion to adapt CoSpaces project into assessment rubrics What have I learnt from this sharing session? The greatest takeaway from the sharing is the introduction of the apps Google Tour Creator and CoSpaces EDU .  Google Tour Creator  allows the students to create their own 360 photos (though presenter did warn that stable and patient camera skills are paramount to getting a good 360 view), while  CoSpaces EDU  allows the kids to upload 360 photos to create their own virtual 'scenes', before making use of their creativity to modify these scenes using character/item templates and annotations of their own.  The use of these 2 apps definitely provides a valuable opportunity for students to enliven their presenta...
Post a Comment
Find out what else I've written »

ExCEL Fest Keynote Address: Educating The Whole Child: Why All Learning Is Social And Emotional To The Brain by Professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

Source: https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/how-to-make-learning-relevant/ Emotions may be automatic responses to situations, but we need to "learn how to feel". Strangely enough, I can actually connect to the analogy she gave when she shared on how her daughter had written a song for her brother, putting together her drawing, writing and song-writing skills to present this gift to her brother, because of her love for her brother. I see the same thing happening at home. - My child K1 is fascinated with marine creatures and marine biology nowadays having watched Octonauts on Netflix. He was able to use his love for the cartoon to extend reading and information search on his own to find out more about marine creatures he learnt about from the show (thanks to the Google Home mini in the living room). - He was also able to combine his love for drawing and his love for the cartoon to transform them into 'character hats'. He basically used his free play time a...
Post a Comment
Find out what else I've written »

[Dept Meeting (28 Dec 2020)] Reflections

What were the main things I learned today, and how will these be useful to my work in 2021?  Today, we revisited the Pedagogical Scaffold 2.0 and spent some time to discuss about designing different LEs for a similar content area. Click here for details of each Learning Experiences on the PDLP website. To me, this process is no much different from our traditional roles as classroom teachers. Why do I say so? We are still planning for students' learning in a mindful way, from outlining the learning outcomes, to designing the activities suitable in scaffolding the students' learning. Akin to teachers with varied teaching styles, those of us who have tried designing LEs tend to have our preferred LEs (e.g. my preferred is Acquisition , because it is the most predictable way for me to organise my lesson stimuli and lead the students towards the intended lesson objectives). For 2021, I would definitely want to go beyond my comfort zone and opt for Inquiry  and Discussion  LEs...
Post a Comment
Find out what else I've written »