Dollar Daze and Thrifty Finds: January 2010

The Dollar Daze and Thrifty phenomenon continues with more neat teaching ideas based on a featured monthly find. Thank you for your contributions as we continue to embrace:

"Reinvention is the new Mother of Invention"

The intent is to develop activities where the teacher is talking less and students are doing more.

December Feature

Plasticine

Purpose:

To help students construct meaning and understanding of a concept with models.

"Making physical models in the creation of non-linguistic representaions stimulates and increases

activity in the brain". (Gerlic & Jausovec, 1999)

Modeling Meaning and Understanding to Reinforce Concepts...

“I make therefore I am.”

Suzanne Ramljak from Crafting a New World, Utne Reader,

Jan/Feb, 2010

In the article entitled Crafting a New World (Utne Reader, Jan/Feb. 2010), Sociologist Richard Sennett explains to Suzanne Ramljak the value of craftsmanship and how creating with your hands is an opportunity for reflection and critical thinking. Creating an object is a concrete representation of our thoughts and understanding and according to Sennett “satisfies a psychological desire for closure and tangible results.”

With teacher demands to cover a vast amount of classroom material less time is available for student reflection and self-analysis of completed tasks. According to Sennett, “We go by the notion that once you’ve solved something, the actual experience of doing it is secondary. That whittles down attention…..First and foremost people believe the most important thing about work is making as much money as possible.”

How does this concept translate into the classroom?

1. Offer students an opportunity to make…to construct meaning and
    understanding of a concept with models.

2. “Ban all-multiple-choice questions in tests, which encourage people to
    get to the quickest answer possible rather than to dwell on
    the problem (Sennett, 2010).”

Ramljak, S. (2010, Jan./Feb.). Crafting a new world. Utne Reader, Retrieved from
http://www.utne.com/Spirituality/Crafting-a-New-Word.aspx