In Classrooms

In Schools and Projects

At the Discover Lab

What Do Constructivist Lesson Plans Look Like?

Constructivism in Action

In Classrooms

Jacqueline Grennon Brooks talks about constructivism.

Virginia Lockwood, a first-grade teacher at P.S. 116 in New York, talks about the importance of her students' creating their own knowledge.

The next three videos demonstrate a particular constructivist technique in action -- the strategy of "academic controversy," in which students research and gather information about a controversy, advocate a particular position using evidence to support their point of view, then generate a consensus or compromise among themselves that merges the opposing perspectives. In the video to the right, Peter Mason's class at Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities in New York debates a wildlife conservation issue.

In Tim Simonds's sixth- and seventh-grade classes at the Sulk School of Science in New York, students simulate an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council to address a scenario the teacher has constructed. The students have been studying the history of the people, nations, and governments involved in a dispute between Venezuela and Guyana. Both nations claim sovereignty over the territory of Essequibo, a region in Northern Guyana. In order to provide the context for "learning-by-doing," the teacher presents a hypothetical scenario in which Venezuela attacks and occupies Essequibo.

Students adopt the role of U.N. delegates representing the member nations. In order to serve their nation's interests and understand the nature of the dispute, students research "their country's" historical background as well as the factors leading to the conflict they are attempting to resolve. During the course of the simulation, student delegates present and debate their viewpoints, learning how to negotiate a compromise resolution that will be voted upon during the session. Following an initial presentation of each side's claims, students switch positions in order to reformulate arguments according to the opposing camp's perspective. As a result, students learn to appreciate diverse perspectives on a given issue because they are compelled to understand the forces that drive an opposing point of view.

During the caucuses, students debate, justify their claims, and try to persuade other delegates to vote in favor of their position. This process allows students to discover and understand the factors that influence actions and events in history. After student delegates have argued their positions, they are prepared to vote on a resolution. Students are not merely learning history, they are creating history by experiencing the multiple complexities of historical events.

The sciences are a particularly fruitful area for students to draw on their previous knowledge and experience to conduct experiments and construct knowledge about various scientific concepts.

Once again, rather than merely reading about and being "informed" by the teacher, these eighth-grade students at the Spry Middle School in Webster, New York, try to understand the interaction between motion and speed through the mechanisms that drive a ride at an amusement park. The first step is to brainstorm ideas based on their own experiences and other related knowledge that they already possess. These assumptions are tested and confirmed or rejected by subsequent research the students actually conduct.

A critical knowledge-building step entails conducting research in order to draw conclusions that will help students to answer their questions and verify their assumptions. In addition, students must explain the results of their research, a step that engages the students in the critical thinking process as they draw their conclusions. They create their own mental models in order to explain their results, draw conclusions, and communicate these conclusions to their peers.

Here, children are designing a parachute in order to explore the effect of shape, size, and weight on the rate of descent. In a traditional setting, the teacher "teaches" these facts in the classroom. However, a real-world design problem allows children to discover the interaction between these variables. Through trial and error and collaborative learning, children attempt to figure out which combination of conditions will enable a parachute to descend.

Virginia Lockwood encourages her first graders at P.S. 116 to reflect on their knowledge-creation process.

Virginia Lockwood's first graders express their knowledge in their presentation on sharks.

In Schools and Projects

At the Discover Lab

Jacqueline Grennon Brooks, EdD. (this CONCEPT TO CLASSROOM workshop's content expert), Cathy Bennett, and the Center for Science, Mathematics and Technology Education run the Discover Lab at SUNY Stony Brook. The Discover Lab features classrooms-in-a-classroom where education students teach K-12 students while learning about constructivist teaching.

Last year, many people were wondering about the Y2K problem and whether many services we take for granted would really break down. The Discover Lab developed a curriculum (one among many) called "Starting from Scratch," designed to start students thinking about what people would need to know if we really had to start from scratch. Below are some of its components, as described by Jacqueline Grennon Brooks: . Communicating We don't have anything to use for writing. But we do have some soil and wax. Could we make our own crayons? How hot do we need to get the wax for it to melt? Does it always melt at the same temperature? How do we mix the soil and the wax to get the smoothest color crayon?

Photo by Catherine Bennet

 

Photo by Catherine Bennet

. Maintaining a Garden We have a garden on a hill and a pond below it. We want to use the pond to water the garden. But, water always seems to flow down. We could carry buckets. But, there must be an easier way! We have some siphoning tubes, an aquarium aerator, and materials to make water wheels and aqueducts. Will any of these items be useful to help us solve our problem? . Feeding Ourselves Pasta is a comfort food for lots of people. Without any boxes of spaghetti around, could we make our own? Take out the flour and water and a little olive oil, if you're lucky, and let's find out how much flour you need with how much water to get a dough that's not too sticky, but not too dry. After we make our dough, we need to determine how big to make the pasta pieces. We can use the pots of boiling water to cook the pasta. But, there are so many of us, we each only get five minutes of boiling time. Does the size of the pasta matter in how long it takes to cook?

. Appreciating the Life around Us In the movie THE LION KING, Mufasa told Simba that, in the end, we're all food for earthworms. Maybe we need to learn a little about earthworms to know what that means? We have some questions: Do earthworms prefer the light or the dark? Can they swim? Can they hear? It appears that asking them won't give us an answer. So, how else can we find out? We have the earthworms. What else do we need, and what do we need to do to find out the answers to our questions? . Expressing Our Artistic Selves We have some cloth we can use to make clothes. But, it's too plain and we like color. A friend told us that we could get the orange out of yams, the red out of beets, the purple out of cabbage juice, and the green out of spinach, and then we could use the color to dye the cloth. But, how do we go about doing that? Do we chop or grind the vegetables? Can we mix them with water? Does the temperature of the water make a difference? Another friend said that vinegar somehow helps. What does it do?

Photo by Catherine Bennet

  . Keeping Our Property Clean
We found a huge collection of old pennies. But, they're so grimy that the bank wouldn't take them. The bank tellers told us that the dirty pennies would jam the counting machine. We need to clean them, but we have no cleaning supplies, only some leftover items from the refrigerator and kitchen cabinet: ketchup, salt, oil, some lemons, vinegar, baking soda, and chili sauce. Will any of these items help solve the cleaning problem?

Photo by Catherine Bennet

. Learning about Other Ways to Grow Plants We've heard of hydroponics many times, the science and art of growing plants without soil. The seeds and the plants that grow from them need some type of support and a way of getting the water and fertilizer that they need. With the materials on the table or others that you need and we can get for you, design a system whereby your plants can grow. One major challenge to hydroponic gardeners is the wicking system that brings the water to the plants. We have three different types of wicks. Which is the "best"? How do you know? What is your proof?

Let's look at a student response to the last lesson on hydroponic gardening.