Week 3 of TwT:Teachers and Students: Can we both win?

This was a very intense week where we discussed various learning theories (Behavioral Theory, Cognitive Theory and Social Theory) and teaching models (ADDIE, ASSURE and Constructivism). I discovered that my teaching style is in keeping with the ADDIE model. This is probably due to the fact that this model seems to be very well suited for the sciences. ADDIE is a step-by-step, methodical system of presenting curriculum to students, which supports the intense, data specific New York State Regents Chemistry curriculum that I teach. This model does involve continuous evaluation of students, which I personally find to be an advantage in the classroom. This allows me to modify my lessons as necessary to maximize the success of my students. Compared to the ADDIE model the ASSURE model is generally more student friendly. It leads to a more authentic classroom environment where the lessons are more student driven rather than teacher driven. This model would work very well for contents such as Social Studies and English but is not too well suited to the content of high school science classrooms. We investigated the model of Constructivism next. This I found to be very enlightening because the model is based on the idea that learners build knowledge on what already know. Students must be active in their own learning because their knowledge is a product of their own personal cognition. This model provides authenticity to the learning process. The advantage of this model is that it is student driven with the teacher being more of a guide for the students as they participate in their own learning. A huge disadvantage with this model is the fact that it is very time dependent. Students all learn at different paces to get to the same finish line and it can be very difficult, depending on the content to be learned, to accomplish this in the time allowed. The 5E Model was particularly interesting in its concept and design. The five E’s represent the steps a teacher follows when creating a lesson to maximize student achievement and higher level learning. They are:
Engagement – activation of prior knowledge
Exploration – hands-on activities to satisfy the curiosity of the student
Explanation – student’s must describe what are learning about content
Elaboration – student’s knowledge is extended into other content areas
Evaluation – student’s exchange their ideas and/or experiences with others This is an authentic way of using an inquiry process to allow students to take an active role in their own learning. As a principal this would be a very attractive concept to pitch to teachers because it puts the onus on the students to actively participate. On the down side is the fact that time is a huge issue, especially in the highly packed content curriculum found in Regents level courses