Properties of air in first grade classrooms

Teaching Properties

The Properties of Air in First Grade Class

At what level of cognitive development were Jenny's students likely to be? Was her instruction effective for that level? Explain.

Jenny's students were likely to be at the pre-operational stage of early childhood. At this stage, children are most engaged by concrete and discovery-oriented learning, which was effectively supported by Jenny's use of experiments in her primary instructional techniques. Also egocentric thinking predominates during this stage, and Jenny used familiar examples and objects in her experiments to help explain more complex ideas to her students.

Identify the Piagetian stage of development that children in video were observed to be characterizing.

The children's belief in what they saw, rather than in what as simply explained to them as abstract concepts, and their tendency to give feelings to the environment showed they were in the preoperational stage.

Provide reasoning as to why you chose the particular stage of development, both from the evidence observed in the video (two examples provided by Jenny and responded to by her students), and the characteristics of development identified by Piaget in the text.

Children of eight or nine do not always have concrete understandings about matter, as Piaget found that children at this stage will assume a broken piece of clay is more than the same single mass of clay, and that an object hidden from their view is gone. The children's assumption that water goes away when it becomes air and the children's assumption that a glass ice is 'more matter' than liquid water, because the ice appears more voluminous also reflect this assumption.

In Piagetian terms, explain the importance of using the particular props and materials, especially in relation to the developmental stage of the children in Jenny's class. Include a discussion of the water and vinegar experiment, the paper towel in the glass, and the small group activity. Specifically, why would Piaget concur with Jenny's use of these objects and activities?

During this developmental stage, children understand things in concrete and observable terms and the use of the experimental object had many observable properties, including size, weight, shape, color, temperature, and the ability to react with other substances. Also, the object's familiarity related well to the natural egotism of children of this age.

Demonstrate an understanding of Piaget's concepts of assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium in relation to use of these objects.

Assimilation is the process of using or transforming the environment so that it can be placed in preexisting cognitive structures, as with the water and vinegar experiment where a change occurred during the experiment and the children saw the same objects return to a state of sameness. This forced the children to recognize that change is not always observable in the end product. Accommodation is the process of changing cognitive structures in order to accept something from the environment, so that now, after the paper towel in the class, children will see their environment differently, even when it appears the same as before and they did not witness the change while it was occurring. Equilibrium is a state of acceptance that one's preconceived notions were not the full reality.

Question

Why was the medium of water important for Jenny's lesson? How does this relate to Piaget's levels of development?

In a preoperational stage of understanding the world, young children begin their study of matter by examining and qualitatively describing objects and their behavior, hence the beginning of the experiment with an observable form of air as water.

Explain what specifically makes water an important tool to use in order to clarify the more abstract concept of air.

Third-grade students are often familiar with the change of state between water and ice, because water and ace are concrete objects. The idea of liquids and solids are easier to grasp than invisible air for this age group, because air is observable.

Provide at least one example of how water was used in the experiment to help the students better understand the concept of air.

The water on the paper towel enabled students to 'see' the property being discussed, even though air is invisible.

Discuss the reason as to why it is necessary to use such a concrete item as water for these children in terms of their current development.

When students can see and manipulate objects, they can be asked to describe them and put objects in visual and verbal terms that they can relate to, in their current developmental stage. Piaget observed students relate to objects at this age by touching what is concrete, describing objects and an object's location in space.

Question

How well did Jenny follow constructivist guidelines? What could she have done differently to make the lesson more constructivist?

Jenny made use of group activities, and socially engaged forms of learning, although a strict constructivist would have wanted her to begin with such group activities.

Discuss constructivism in terms of the constructs defined and discussed by both Piaget and Vygotsky in the text. What is the basic difference between the approaches of these two theorists?

Piaget believed that biological development drives the movement from one cognitive stage to the next, while Vygotsky stressed the need for such learning to be more carefully constructed in an orderly fashion by the teacher, who must create a scaffold for one level of learning to the next.

Discuss how Jenny adapted constructivist techniques in her class in order to elicit thought and participation on the part of her students, including at least two concrete examples that demonstrate constructivism in this classroom.

Using team teaching of concepts about objects between students would have created more of a hands-on environment, and prevented the instruction from exceeding the student's current cognitive capacities of their developmental stage. This could have reinforced misconceptions. However, Jenny did make use of scaffolding, that is, introducing more familiar concepts that she used to build upon, to introduce less familiar concepts. Also, her own example-based learning in front of the class acted as a kind of role model for her students.

Provide at least one alternative strategy Jenny could have used which is constructivist in nature. Analysis should include advantages and disadvantages of this alternative approach.

Jenny could have brought in older students to explain the concepts and help students conduct some of the experiments she showed the students, to help shape the student's learning under supervision of more age-appropriate role models. However, older students might not have the vocabulary to explain the experiments or notice when the younger students did not understand the point of the experiment.

Describe how you would teach this lesson to a class of 8th graders. How would you justify any changes?