INFORMATION PROCESSING FAMILY

INFORMATION PROCESSING FAMILY

• Project-based Learning
• Inquiry Learning
• Socratic Dialogue

Project-based Learning

Long-term, interdisciplinary, and student-centered.

Centered around challenging questions
or problems which involve

students in investigative activities,
problem-solving, design, and decision making.

Allows the opportunity for students
to work voluntarily
over significant amounts of time
and often culminates in realistic presentations or products.
appropriate as a method for teaching certain basic skills

How to Plan A Project

• May take up to 1 week to year-long
• Based on a single subject in a single classroom
• Involve widespread community participation

Not
appropriate as a method for teaching certain basic skills

It requires time for both teachers and students to
master the behaviors and strategies necessary for successful project-based instruction.

Students sometimes have difficulty with:

• Generating meaningful scientific questions - little experience in this area
• Managing complexity and time- Finishing up in days and weeks is much different than the "due tomorrow" assignments
• Analyzing and evaluating data
• Developing a logical argument to support claims

Teachers sometimes have difficulty with:

Time

• Take longer than expected
• Exacerbated by the time to implement in-depth approaches

Classroom Management

• Teachers must balance the need to allow students to work on their own with the need to maintain order.
• This is especially difficult for new teachers who often are concerned about classroom management issues.

Control

• Often feel the need to control the flow of information while at the same time understanding that this approach requires students to build their own understandings.

Support for Student Learning

• Have difficulty supporting students' activities, giving them either too much independence or too little modeling and feedback.

Assessment

• Have difficulty designing assessments that require students to demonstrate their understanding.

Instructional Sequence

• The problem generation consists of problem posing, problem definition, and problem categorization.
• This leads directly into the project-based portion of the instructional sequence
• Next is the creation of cooperative teams in which individual expertise will be acquired as groups begin to solve the problems posed and categorized in the preceding section.
• After sustained study students break into Jigsaw groups, which provide a forum for the distribution of individual expertise to that of other students in the class.
• It culminates with a consequential task in which students' thinking is made both visible and public

Inquiry Learning

The 5 E Learning Cycle Model

• Engagement- A need to know, so they can defines questions, issues or problems that relate to his/her world.
• Exploration (Investigate)- gathers, organizes, interprets, analyzes, valuates data.
• Explanation (Clarify)- Clarifies understandings discovered, reaches conclusions or generalizations and communicates in varying modes and forms.
• Elaboration (Expand)- Applies these conclusions or generalizations to solve problems, make decisions, perform tasks, resolve conflicts or make meaning
• Evaluation- Students assess their knowledge, skills and abilities. Activities permit evaluation of student development and lesson effectiveness.

What Are the Students Doing?

students will see that:

• View Themselves as Active Participants in the Process of Learning
• Accept an "Invitation to Learn" and Readily Engage in the Exploration Process
• Plan and Carry Out Investigations
• Communicate Using a Variety of Methods
• Propose Explanations and Solutions and Build a Store of Concepts
• Raise Questions
• Use Observations
• Critique Their Science Practices

What is the Teacher Doing?

Teachers will see that

• Model Behaviors and Skills
• Support Content Learning
• Use Multiple Means of Assessment
• Act as Facilitators

Problem-solving Strategies

Compass Quest

• Situation Appraisal - how to evaluate "the whole picture" by breaking issues down into chunks, establishing priorities and determining appropriate steps to resolve the issues.
• Decision Analysis - a process for making a decision when the choice between alternatives is unclear. Involves systematically examining the elements of and decision-objectives, choices and risks.
• Problem Analysis - how to find the root cause of problems so that corrective actions can be taken.
• Potential Problem Analysis - tools for thinking about potential problems and planning preventive and contingent actions.

Complex Situation

• Definition: Multifaceted scenarios have multiple variables and opinions.
• Requirement: Understanding of relevant variables, their priorities, and possible action plans
• -S-ee the issues -C-larify the issues -A-ssess priorities -N-ame next steps

Problem Situation

• Definition: Something has gone wrong or an unknown cause has produced some undesired effect
• Requirement: Analysis of relevant data to evaluate possible causes and determine true cause
• -F-ocus on the problem -I-dentify what is and is not -N-arrow possible causes -D-etermine true cause

Decision Situation

• Definition: Upcoming plans, changes, and actions will be implemented
• Requirement: Identification of actions needed for successful implementation and identifying potential problems and how to handle them.
• -P-redict potential problems -L-ist likely causes -A-gree on preventive actions -N-ote contingent actions

Fostering Inquiry

Questions for Quality Thinking

• Knowledge-Identification and recall of information
• Comprehension-Organization and selection of facts and ideas
• Application-Use of facts, rules, principles
• Analysis-Separation of a whole into component parts
• Synthesis-Combination of ideas to form a new whole
• Evaluation-Development of opinions, judgements, or decisions

Strategies to Extend Student Thinking

• Remember "wait time I and II"
• Utilize "thinking-pair-share"
• Ask "follow-ups"
• Withold judgment
• Ask for summary (to promote active listening)
• Survey the class
• Allow for student calling
• Play devil's advocate-require student to defend their reasoning against different points of view.
• Ask students to "unpack their thinking"
• Call on students randomly-Not just those with raised hands.
• Student questioning- Let the students develop their own questions
• Cue student responses

Socratic Dialogue

Socratic Dialogue is about...

• Discover the Question "Why"
• Valuable in places where students are learning ethics.
• The primary goal is to encourage Critical Thinking.
• Don't give unanswerable questions, and don't have them thinking critically about difficult issues.
• Callenging students assumptions.

Steps

• Create Open-ended Questions- Pick controversial topics and provide questions or have students to develop their own questions, or develop the questions as a class.
• Begin the Discussion: Teacher can lead the coversation, but the goal is to have students take over through out the school year.
• Ask for Follow Up Questions
• Sum up with a summary with new learnings and differant thoughts.

Tips for Leaders of the Discussion

• Have the conversation focused on the topic
• Allow everyone having equal time from all members
• Students need to elaborate and clarify
• Key points: Clarify, synthesize, and restate opinions

Tips for Participants

• Think and speak persuasively
• Remember to give support
• Show respect
• Don't interrupt others

The End