It is important to remember that all children have not always been exposed to problem based learning. They may be from different cultures or places where this is not the primary way to learn. In fact, many of these children may not have the language skills to succeed in this type of environment.
Our problem based learning needs to:
involve learners in gaining and organizing knowledge of content
include communication and collaboration
contain specific objectives that must be met along they way in order to solve the bigger problem
I also see now that discussion is not the only way to communicate and for children to learn. As teachers, our focus should be on our children working and learning to solve problems and grasping the content of what they are learning. In order to this, we need to integrate reading and writing instead of just discussion. These tasks are shown to “ encourage students to think about issues and contextualize their thinking practice.”
- Chapter 6 also stresses not to do things that the students can do for themselves. In fact, the shift between responsibility from the teacher to the student can be part of the learning process for the student. Allowing them to create the rubric, control the mouse, write on the smart board, or develop the questions for the assignment can not only allow the students to be interactive in the lesson, but also allow them to work through the problems and hopefully lead to success of grasping the content without just reading it from a book or listening to the teacher tell about it.
