Constructivist Theory In Classroom

1208 Words5 Pages
Traditionally, students have sat at their desks waiting for the teacher to spew information at them. They sit, they listen and copy notes from the board. This is not the idea behind the constructivist theory. The constructivist theory argues that knowledge comes from real world experiences. A constructivist classroom is constructive, active, reflective, collaborative, inquiry-based, and evolving. Students already have some knowledge of the world around them. This should be used as their starting point. They can’t be viewed as ‘blank slates’ where the teacher is starting from scratch. They will create knowledge based on what they already know. This is how they’ll come up with different ways to solve problems. For this to happen the classroom…show more content…
This means that students are experimenting, investigating, creating, and discovering. For example, if the students are learning about money then rather than showing photos on the board of what each coin looks like the students should be able to hold and touch each coin. They should be able to tangibly learn with the tools rather than just about them. The teacher can set up a store where there are supplies or fun little toys and activities for the students to buy. This kind of thing takes a lot of planning, but is essentially what a constructivist teacher believes. The idea would be that the students earn ‘money’ for doing their job (homework, completing activities, or even doing well on quizzes and tests). They should be able to earn the value of every piece of money they’re learning about. So, if they’re learning about everything from a penny to a dollar then they should have the opportunity to earn all of those. Then, when permitted they can take the money they earn, go to the ‘store’ and use their knowledge of money to buy what they want or need. This kind of hands-on activity can be used in conjunction with doing things like taking notes and viewing things on the board, but ultimately what the students will remember is what they were able to touch and do…show more content…
Once the material has been presented to the class the idea would be that each student would pick part of the lesson to then teach the class. For example, take the big concept of mathematics. Each students picks one piece of what they’ve learned. Maybe one students picks order of operations and another may pick fractions. They take what they know and what they’ve learned from their lessons and use it to create their own small lesson on the topic. This benefits the teacher as well as the students. This allows the teacher to see where the student needs improvement. This is part of the hands-on learning experience. They may even realize their own mistakes and be able to fix them. This kind of activity also allows student to students and student to teacher communication. This can also go hand-in-hand with class discussion. Throughout the lesson the students being taught may have questions. In doing this the teacher in empowering the students to take responsibility for their
Open Document