Afrodita Fuentes SED 600 05/09/07 Metacognition - Review #5 Ch. 13 Pulling Threads in the book How Students Learn: Science inthe Classroom(Instructions from syllabus: Examination of information in reference to my own research and how will my research is influenced by this informationin presentations?) This book suggests that students come with preconceptions to the classroom and it is very important to address those misconceptions for productive learning to occur. The strategies used for such purpose are grouped into three approaches. First, is tapping into students’ prior knowledge and experiences acquired inside and outside of the classroom? One goal is conceptual change meaning that any misconception must be changed before new learning can occur. For this to happen in the minds of students, many and repeated opportunities need to be available for studentsto strengthen the new conception so that it becomes dominant. Second, students need to experience many opportunities to experience events that would not normally occur in everyday life. This is very important when studying topics such as gravity and force in physics, and variation and natural selection in biology. Third, students need to be exposed to narrativeaccounts or stories of the discovery of knowledge or the development of tools. In other words, present students with the scientists’ real experiences,thoughts, and feeling of discovering or developing new things. This might be considered out of the scope of the standards, but it can make thematerial more engaging and meaning, thus leading to more efficiency in learning the content standards. Prior knowledge is very important to me in the classroom and use it toshow my students how much they know about biology already and how our lives and bodies are all about biology. This adds value to what they already know and what they bring to the classroom, such as they culture. For example every year, at the end of our Molecules of Life unit (first month intothe semester), we have a food feast for the purpose of connecting the chemistry of life to the big picture and celebrating our culture. In this day, students bring their favorite cultural dish to share with the class. Students identify the major food groups in their dishes and begin to think of healthy eating. They explain the history of their dishes and the recipes. They build community which what will drive our motivation and level of comfort with each other for the next three months of the semester. In other words, all these activities help create a student-centered environment which supports student achievement, one of the topics of my action research. Organizing knowledge around core concepts requires knowing how torecognize which concepts are “core,” according to this book. There are twotypes of core concepts. These are concepts about the nature of the discipline (what it means to do science, math, and history) and concepts that are central to the understanding of the subject matter (exploration). It seems that core concepts are easily recognizable only by experts, perhaps the teacher. I wonder then, how can we help students recognize the coreconcepts. I believe this has to be through direct instruction by the teacher and later on the students catch on and learn how to do it themselves. This book also warns us about experts cannot be explicit with learners about the basic principles that allow for understanding of the core concepts because they are too comfortable with their subject. In this case, peer teaching is very helpful because a student who has just learned the concept can teach itbetter to someone else who does not understand it. I totally agree with this.I always admire those teachers who have taught for years and still understand where our students are coming from, I am afraid I will not be that kind of teacher ten years from now. I will try to by keeping up with the literature of who students learn and reflections on classroom activities that involve student feedback. How Students Learn also emphasizes the importance of group work and discussion to support metacognition. Here students reflect on what they learn and how they learn. The idea is that the more students observe and question, they become better at monitoring and questioning their own thinking. It is very difficult to teach students to become metacognitive of their own learning. When students are discussing, they are forced to searchin their minds for connections to their past knowledge to explain and support their claims. The teacher needs to guide these discussions through ideal questions, which can be a challenging instructional task. Another danger of group work is the possibility that one group member dominates the discussion and that is why I hesitated to implement group work. Oneapproach to avoiding this is to have student rate their won effort in their product and group dynamics. My question is, “how is this done?” Another approach is to have each student write a 1-2 minute reflection on the discussion. I feel the challenge of coming up with the right questions when my students work in groups to prepare presentations. Sometimes they do not know where to start, but when I provide them with questions they immediately start working. Coming up with the right questions takes a lot of thought, time, planning, and skill, but it is wonderful when the conversations keep going because students themselves are asking a variety of questions they generate. It is even more successful when students feel comfortable to challenge themselves and find the tools for questioning themselves (this usually happens the second month into the semester in my classroom). I am eager about continuing group work and reciprocal teaching next year (in July) because I know students have a lot of fun and actually learn. I did a little bit of it this past semester and a couple questions I asked at the end of the semester were, “What activity did you and enjoy the most? What activity did you learn from the most and why?” Probably 95% of my students said presentations for both questions, although dissections was very popular, presentations seemed to be what helped them learn the most. Some of their comment include “I was forced to learn the material and it was nice because I knew how to answer in the test,” “I lost my shyness to speak in front of many people,” “I knew how toexplain,” and “I was