How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition

How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition

Problem ID: Prezi Presentation

Formative Assessment

This month's focus for the Powerful Conversations Network was on formative assessment. This emphasis aligns directly with using problem based or inquiry based learning in the classroom. Formative assessment is a shared process between student and teacher. The teacher gives constant feedback as the student "forms" his or her knowledge. This type of assessment is essential to guiding students along the path of learning. Formative assessment is the "practice" and it is what makes learning authentic, real, and metacognitive.

Examples of formative assessment: Exit Slips, Polls, Thumbs up, down, sideways, Parking Lot/ Post it, Anticipation Guides, Think Pair, Share, Observation, Peer Evaluation, Reflection, Diagnostic Tests, Journaling

Our principal shared this video as an example of the complexities and importance of formative assessment... if we don't use it, we set ourselves and the students up for failure or in this case scraping ice on another car:

Inquiry Based Learning

"Tell me, I forget. Show me, and I remember. Involve me and I understand."


Inquiry based learning is learning that is driven through questioning. Essentially it reveals the way in which an individual processes knowledge and supports this process through the learning. Through asking questions, students become the masters of their knowledge. Socratically, students question and the teacher continues to fuel this inquiry through a facilitated learning environment. Inquiry-based learning asks students to conjecture, analyze, argue, critique, and to prove or disprove. IBL functions under the concept that learning requires doing and thinking and this is an antecedent for learning. This model for learning continuously asks why, promotes students working together, allows for take home test, and regular quizzes.

This makes sense because it gets to the process of learning itself and makes learning authentic. Why do we learn? Because we ask questions. How do we learn more? Ask more questions. While inquiry is at times open-ended and difficult to track, it instills in students an essential skill to learning which is to become curious and understand how to follow that inquiry.

A study that shows an example of implementation in a calculus class:
http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED506294.pdf


Helpful websites for starting this type of module in your class:
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/inquiry/index.html
http://www.garlikov.com/Soc_Meth.html

Problem Based Learning

The University of Delaware defines problem based learning as, "an instructional method characterized by the use of real world problems as a context for students to learn critical thinking and problem solving skills." This type of learning gives students a problem and asks them to solve through a concentrated or more specific path than IBL. Steps for PBL include: entry, problem framing, knowledge inventory, problem research, resources, problem twist, problem log, problem exit, problem debriefing. The teacher becomes the facilitator to learning that is authentic, real world and engaging. Students use real world problems as context for creating knowledge, applying learning, and solving problems. This method seeks to create active learners and trains them in problem solving and critical thinking.

This method make sense because it gives students real world applications for learning and teaches them how to be problem solvers. Students are engaged by being given a problem, a direction, and they become the drivers of their learning. Ownership? Yes. Metacognitive? Yes again. Empowering? Definitely.

Below is a study of the implementaion of PBL in an Economics classroom:

http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED511228.pdf

Also helpful websites include:

http://www.udel.edu/pbl/cte/jan95-what.html
http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9812/pbl_1.htm