Module 4 – Blog 4 

Promoting Autonomy and Choice

After watching the video “Constructivist Social Studies Lesson Grades 4/5, I could not agree more on the research that shows how student engagement helps a student learn and retain that information.

The reactions that came from these young people when asked how they like this approach of learning was insightful and phenomenal.  They talked about their comfort level increasing because the pressure was not on them alone.  They talked about making new friends because they had to interact with students they would not have otherwise done so.  They had to learn how to speak to each other in a respectful manor.  When presenting, they were not only judged by their peers, but had to turn around and evaluate their peers.  What thrilled me most were to see happy, eager students who were socially comfortable and learning knowledge at a level that would stay inside them. 

Woolfolk explains in chapter ten on page 359, that there is no one Constructivist Theory of learning, but most constructivist theories agree on two central ideas.  As was seen in this video, these two ideas showed that students were participants in building knowledge of their own, and social interactions were a part of that process.

I have seen this kind of learning take place in the middle school where I work in a multi-needs room.  A teacher in the 7^th. Grade regular education, had her students participate in a creative writing story book project.  They were assigned to groups of three or four people and had to create a story with illustrations that were 3-D so that the students in my class room could feel and see what was going on in the story.  When the projects were completed, the students had to present their story to the students that were in my multi-needs room.  The students handle their presentations like professional leaders and quite literally blew me and my co-works away. 

Student engagement as seen in the video, and seeing it myself is a learning style that I wish had been a part of my learning process going to school so many years ago.  I can’t help but wonder if learning in that way, perhaps my self-esteem and thought process, not to mention attitude would have been different.