TP Task Two – Active Learning Environments

A website/blog is required for this task.

Planning activities that allow students to clarify, question, apply, and consolidate
new knowledge.
What is an active learning environment? What are its benefits? How does it link to the
inquiry cycle?
In an active learning environment, the students must have hand-on mind-on activities. That
means they must be actively doing and thinking, when their hands are creating their minds
should question, analyze, sort and evaluate. (Candler and Blogger, n.d)
Reference Candler, L. and Blogger, T. (n.d). Actively engage students using hands-on &
minds-on instruction. Retrieved 27 October 2018, from
http://www.teachhub.com/actively-engage-students-using-hands-minds-
instruction

CONCEPT ROLE IN ACTIVE LEARNING One Reference from 2015 forward that
shows what the concept is AND how it
works in Active Learning
STUDENT refers to a wide variety of educational https://www.edglossary.org/student-
CENTRED programs, learning experiences, centered-learning/
instructional approaches, and
academic-support strategies that are
intended to address the distinct
learning needs, interests, aspirations,
or cultural backgrounds of individual
students and groups of students
INQUIRY CYCLE refers to a wide variety of evaluative, https://www.edglossary.org/action-
investigative, and analytical research research/
methods designed to diagnose
problems or weaknesses—whether
organizational, academic, or
instructional—and help educators
develop practical solutions to address
them quickly and efficiently.
PROCESS SKILLS Skills used to manage and modify https://medical-
actions in the completing of daily living dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/process+
tasks, such as pacing oneself, skills
choosing and using appropriate tools to
complete a task, or organizing a task
into a logical sequence for successful
completion.
 CONCEPT ROLE IN ACTIVE LEARNING One Reference from 2015 forward that
shows what the concept is AND how it
works in Active Learning
HANDS-ON actively doing and thinking, when http://www.teachhub.com/actively-
MINDS-ON their hands are creating their engage-students-using-hands-minds-
minds should question, analyze, instruction
sort and evaluate.
CONSTRUCTIVISM Teaching philosophy based on the http://www.businessdictionary.com/defini
concept that learning (cognition) is the tion/constructivism.html
result of 'mental construction' -
students construct their own
understanding by reflecting on their
personal experiences, and by relating
the new knowledge with what they
already know.
PROBLEM the process or act of finding a solution https://www.merriam-
SOLVING to a problem webster.com/dictionary/problem-solving
BLOOM’S https://www.edglossary.org/blooms-
TAXONOMY is a classification system used to define taxonomy/
and distinguish different levels of
human cognition—i.e., thinking,
learning, and understanding.
ESSENTIAL & Essential questions are based on the https://sites.google.com/a/rsu13.org/regi
GUIDING broad topics (lynchpin ideas) that are onal-world-language-leader/writing-
QUESTIONS common to all aspects of social essential-questions
studies. Guiding questions provide
focus and direction in answering the
essential questions and are linked to
the specific region or time period being
studied.

SEQUENCING OF is the process of identifying and https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/tim

ACTIVITIES documenting relationships among the e-management-project-
project activities. management/0/steps/21931
ASSESSMENT refers to the wide variety of https://www.edglossary.org/assessment/
methods or tools that educators use
to evaluate, measure, and
document the academic readiness,
learning progress, skill acquisition,
or educational needs of students
ANY OTHER
Choose 3 lessons to observe to answer the following
questions:
Activity one:
Subject: Math
Activity: Creating 3 digits numbers then find 10 and 100 less/more.
Prior knowledge: the students know about the place value up to thousands. Can use
ten blocks to represent numbers.
Impact of the activity (number of students engaged): all the students were engaged,
and they all had a dice to work with. Everyone had his/her own worksheet to record
the numbers they have got and then find 10 and 100 less/more. Some of the students
have been given ten blocks to help them in finding the answers.

Figure 1: An example of a student work (find 10,

100, 1000, less than 3431)

Activity two:
Subject: Science
Activity: Representing the formation of mountains (uplift/subduction) using two
biscuits.
Prior knowledge: The students have learned about many types of landforms
including mountains. They already know about plate tectonic and how that a whole
in them makes the Magma from the curst to erupt and create volcano. They know
the layers of earth. They have seen a video about the formation of mountains and
now they are applying it themselves.
Impact of the activity (number of students engaged): All the students were engaged
in the activity. Where they all had their own biscuits and they were able to
experiment it themselves. That helped them to connect the new information with
their kinesthetic memory.

Figure 2: The students had to show uplift movement of plate tectonics to form a mountain.

Activity Three:
Subject: Language
Activity: In pairs they have to Sequence the event of the story and then identifying
the story features (Begging, build up, problem, resolution, ending).
Prior knowledge: the students have read the stories before and the teacher play for
them again. The students can identify the title, author, illustrator, beginning and
ending of the story.
 Impact of the activity (number of students engaged): all the students were involved
in the activity and they were able to order the events almost right. Most of them
were able to label the story features but, some of them struggled in finding the
buildup and the resolution.

Figure 3: The students ordered the event of “the Ginger Bread Man” Figure 4: High ability students ordered the event of “the Goldilocks and the
story and labeled the story feature using sticky notes. Three Bears” story and labeled the story feature using sticky notes.

Figure 5: The story features displayed on

the board.
 Which activity engaged most students? Why do you think this happened? How
could the activity be improved to further increase student engagement?
Most of the activities that I have observed my MST implementing were students
centered. I think he believes in the idea of Hands on minds on. I liked the way he
explained the activities and model it to the students, and that he tries to involve
them all in the activities. For future recommendation I think it will be better if I
made the students stick the pictures of events in their notebook and then label the
story features. In this way they will create their own resources to be used later.

Record and reflect on the safety components of at

least 3 lessons taught whilst on TP.:

What safety issues were taken into consideration?

Were the students made aware of them? How?

Did any safety issues arise in the lesson that were not planned
for?
Is there signage in the classroom regarding safety?

During my teaching practice with grade 4B at PYP school, I didn’t observe any lesson
that had any safety concerns. For the fact that all the science experiment that have
been conducted didn’t require dangerous chemicals or sharp tools. Their science was
based more on geology and how the world works. For instance, they were learning
about the most common landforms on earth, how they form, change over time and
their effects on the surrounding area, like mountains and volcanoes. Furthermore,
they moved to the natural disasters for their second unit of inquiry. To learn more
about how they form and their impacts on earth. Additionally, they will learn how
countries and individuals act in accordance to these disasters. However, according to
my MST in other units (chemistry or biology) that involve lab work and using tools
that might affect their health. He would display the regular safety rules sheet that is
used in the school’s lab and will discuss it with the students at the beginning of the
unit and every time they will be in the lab.