Constructivism TIPR

The teacher in the high school Life Skills class that I'm completing my field experience in is very good at using different types of learning techniques to teach his students with disabilities. I believe that he has created a classroom using constructivism because most of the lessons he teaches are interactive with students coming up to the board to make choices, students use manipulatives, and the teacher is using dialogue with the students to help them make connections.

One example of the teacher using a constructivist classroom is that on Friday, we went to Cabela's and The Outlets in Lehi on a field trip. The purpose was to help the students to enhance their transition goals. At Cabela's the students worked in groups of four to complete a scavenger hunt about how to locate different places prices, and items in the store. They compared prices and selected preferred items. At The Outlets students went to a retail store and asked the staff there several questions regarding working at the store in preparation for getting a job in the future. After we got back to school, the students wrote a reflection about their experiences on the field trip.

Every student in the class has significant needs in most of the academic areas they're taught. Interactive, dynamic, negotiable, valued learning approaches are definitely what is needed in order for these students to learn and to learn well. Most of the students learn best with engaging, interactive lessons that keep their attention throughout the whole lesson because their attention spans aren't very long.

I incorporated a constructivist approach into the lesson that I taught to the students. I presented the material on the Smartboard and I asked students to come up to the board and choose the appropriate answer and then we discussed each scenario as a class. I gave each of the students a copy of the story we'd gone through on the Smartboard so they could review it with their peer tutors a second time, and a worksheet with questions for them to answer about what they had read.