- Select a grade level and/or subject area you enjoyed in school, and list some of the inert knowledge you were expected to learn associated with a specific topic. Likewise, describe any generative knowledge you might have constructed or acquired as well.
- What is one good example of a generative topic you had an opportunity to explore in school? In what ways were your explorations of the topic important and valuable to you personally? How was this generative topic assessed?
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Book Group Discussion 2: Making The Game Worth Playing
After reading Chapter 2 in the Perkins text (Make the Game Worth Playing), answer the following 2 questions in your group's blog:
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Although I was homeschooled throughout most of my elementary years, I had many experiences that I truly enjoyed. One area I really enjoyed learning about was plants. While my curriculum required me to learn about the parts and needs plants have (inert knowledge), I was able to visually see the process through my mother’s garden. My mother made me responsible for planting, watering, and caring for the plants. The observations of growth were the assessments of whether the plants were thriving. I think that this experience relates to self-care and parenting in some ways. I realized that it took time, money, patience, and nurturing to care for plants just like taking care of children. We not only have to care for ourselves in life, we also have to care for others. Everything in life has to be cared for to some degree.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great experience! It would be great for every student to have the hands-on real life experience that you did. Homeschooling seems to be able to offer a lot of generative knowledge that would be very beneficial to public school classrooms.
DeleteJessica,
DeleteYes, home school does provide a lot of generative knowledge. As a home-schooler, you have the ability to control your time. There is no one saying you have to do "plan A" or have "activity B" completed at a specific time. However, people home school for various reasons, not all of which have to deal with academics. So, just because one home-schooler has a lot of generative knowledge provided in their home does not mean that another home-schooler will. That goes for public education as well. I think educators can provide this in their classrooms more than they do.
Samantha,
DeleteI remember growing plants in my elementary classes too! Do you feel like you had better generative topic opportunities being home-schooled?
My favorite subject in elementary school was always history. Depending on the teacher, and the unit, history required both inert and generative knowledge. Memorizing dates, locations and people was inert knowledge required in the majority of my history classes. I also remember having to memorize the states and their capitals in 6th grade, which was exceptionally difficult for me. In my 3rd and 4th grade classes (I had the same teacher both years) I was exposed to a lot more generative knowledge. For each unit there was a big event that required students to be a member of the time period we were learning about. All of the knowledge learned in class was used to help us develop our roles for our big theme days. When we learned about the renaissance we had a big renaissance day towards the end of the unit so I took on the role of a Jester. When my classmates and parents walked by my section at renaissance day I told them about life from the perspective of a jester (living conditions, food, health, etc.) and taught them how to juggle. Other students had the opportunity to come to these events and learn about our units. These big unit days are a great example of generative knowledge because it connects to real life and other subjects (we used math and writing skills to put on the unit days). These experiences really helped history come alive to me and I am still drawn to the study of ancient civilizations and U.S. history. This also helped me to gain confidence as a public speaker. These events were assessed with a unit test after the event and with a series of project grades.
ReplyDeleteJessica,
DeleteI really enjoyed reading your post. How was math and writing implemented into your unit days during elementary school? Was that incorporated within your history class or was that separate?
How does learning about or presenting the life a jester relate to real life? I know you said that the activity helped you gain confidence in front of audiences, but how does the actual subject material relate to real life? Or shall I ask, how would it relate to today's society? What would be the purpose of learning this material?
Samantha, it was more bringing history to life than it was relating it to current day. We did learn public speaking skills by presenting and technology and research skills while preparing the presentations. It does help relate history to real life because your "living" the life of historic figures for a day. Writing was implemented by preparing the tri fold boards we made for each event as well as creating a handout related to each role we took on. Math was included by having us barter with our classmates for the good or service they were providing that day.
DeleteWhat awesome examples! I would have loved that role-play Jessica! I'm like you...I've loved history since elementary school. I loved every subject in elementary school but I remember elementary school biology the best. We had a local gardener( us kids called her Granny Plant) and she taught us hands on how to grow things and how to dehydrate food. I think the expectations were to learn the parts of a flower or the growing cycle of the flower but we learned much more. Each class had their own pet plants and we learned the differences between cactus and ferns by studying their leaves and how often they were watered. So in that respect, I'm sure it was a similar situation to Samantha's...by watching the plants we asked questions and drew conclusions. My example is from elementary school (4th or 5th grade) there was a farm festival on Virginia Tech's farmland near my elementary school. I remember going to the farm and exploring how it was almost a microsociety in how self-sufficient farms can be. Each station had units and real farmers talked about raising animals and how each cow, hog, chicken, horse ate and how that energy went into the food we ate (by connecting it to the food pyramid). We also saw real gardens and everyone could see how their favorite fruit or vegetable grew. We also learned about composting and recycling and how those small activities could contribute to the whole area by reducing waste. I remember how cool the animals were but I also remember how much we learned about biology during that half day during the farm. Those lessons gave us much to talk about as a class later on and I think most of the kids could tie what they learned on the farm to the inert lessons.
DeleteWhat fun experiences Michelle! I would have loved to have experienced going to the farm and seeing all of the animals!
DeleteJessica,
DeleteWere these events held after school? I think these were a great way to assess whether students actually understood the life of people in certain time periods. If a child can verbally explain something, I believe they have a better understanding than being able to just answer questions on a test.
In High School, I took accounting 1 and accounting 2. I learned both a mixture of generative and inert knowledge. The inert knowledge I obtained would probably be generative knowledge to someone who wants to own their own business, I learned business ownership types and the amount of work and type of work it takes to start a business. The generative knowledge I acquired was how to keep up a banking ledger including assets, expenses, revenues, and liabilities, how to balance a check book, proper business etiquette, and how to file taxes on various forms.
ReplyDeleteA good example of a generative topic I had the opportunity to explore occurred in my 12th grade physics course. I was given task to build a mouse trap car. The mouse trap car used the equations we had learned in physics to help us determine how far the mouse trap car would travel. We also had to understand the concept of simple machines in order for the car to travel. Simple machines are all around us, we need to understand them in order to get through daily activities. This topic was assessed using a race of fastest car and the car that traveled the farthest, after we had the time to build our cars.
I enjoyed reading everyone's posts this week! What grade level and subject area would be like to focus on for our ten questions? Upper elementary science to try to reach everyone's area of concentration?
ReplyDeleteSamantha Created one in the next blog, its mathematics!:)
DeleteAlthough it took me a bit to identify the generative questions, I really enjoyed reading all these anecdotes. Very interesting!
ReplyDelete