Chapter 3 Reflection

I found this chapter very encouraging to see that what we have learned in previous classes is being applied in how children learn. I agree that it was somewhat repeticous, however, I feel that these theories should be emphasised. As a student from the 60's, most science and math classes were learning skills that were rote and there was no opportunity for discovery. This "new" approach that we are studying is so much different and allows children to come up with hypothesis, test them and then go back to the beginning if they have to. One thing that I like in this chapter was the mention of "rehearsal" as opposed to practice. I believe this is a better way to have a student learn a concept for it allows them to generalize and bring that knowledge to a new situation. Once a concept is rehearsed, it can be applied to other situations. Another point that I really liked was that of learning communities. Not only do the children learnn amongst themselves, they have a chance to "challenge" each other in a small group about the conclusion(s) that they have made and need to justify the conclusions that they have. This approach fosters the childrens critical thinking skills, an important part of any problem solving situation. They are allowed to discover, test, retest and conclude within a small group. This encourages cooperation and social skills while they are learning. The last thing that I feel was an important message and has been throughout the book so far, is the idea that children learn best when using"hands-on, minds-on inquiry activities and teacher guidance"(p 77) for organizing their investigations in the science classroom. This was supported by the idea of graphic organizers, not a new idea but very effective when beginning to teach science to younger children. Yes there was repetition of Piaget and Vygotsky's theories but I found the references to the theories and experiments to be very helpful.