To teach the boy, I would access his prior knowledge to teach him this new concept. This way I can go over what he thinks is true and then I can use an example to motivate a change in his thinking. By using a feather and glass to illustrate an example of the rule, I have used more of his senses to teach him something which will make it easier for him to learn. To teach the second example, I would need to stay away from abstract thought. Using concrete examples and bringing in a feather and glass would be beneficial to learning for a student in the concrete operational stage.
Thursday, September 8
Mod 7 Post 2
The boy is probably in the pre-operational stage because he is mentally storing the action he knows (a feather does not break glass) and reproducing it later (answering the question the way he did). Piaget would say he is egocentric and only thinking of this problem from his own perspective. The girl is probably in the concrete operational stage. She has acquired reasoning skills that allowed her to apply the rule to her answer.
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I don't think for the second child that you would necessarily have to stay away from abstract through. She is on a road to more analytical and abstract learning. So introducing it to her and starting off slowly can lead to her learning more and getting into the formal operational stage. But I do like your method for the first boy, it's important to get him to see other perspectives!
ReplyDeleteOne thing that really stuck out to me is the fact that Lauren said that she would access the students prior knowledge before she would begin teaching. I never thought to do that and I really like how she thought above and beyond just simply teaching the student what she knew but learning what he knows. Every student learns differently and trying to get on the same level and perspective of them is very important.
ReplyDeleteHow can you tell that the girl is not in the formal operational stage? She does appear to think logically and hypothetically.
ReplyDeleteYou do a nice job of changing the task to fit the boy's current stage! Remember that Piaget would say that you CANNOT change a child's stage, so you need to give them stage appropriate tasks (Vygotsky would say differently). I think the boy's prior knowledge of a feather is exactly what is conflicting with the new rule that is presented to him. He's not capable of thinking about both simultaneously, or 'overriding' his past knowledge with the new concept of feather described to him. Instead of discussing his past experience with feathers, I'd make the task more concrete, as you describe.
A task that might cause disequilibrium, but be within his stage, is to bring in (or show a video of, more likely) a feather breaking a glass (magically or through video editing). This will make the concept more concrete so that he CAN think about it. Perhaps after this, he can shift his schemas so that he believes 'SOME feathers can break glasses'.