Author: IKIT

Categories
All grades All subjects Grade 1

Emotion and Idea Improvement

Emotional and Cognitive Engagement in Knowledge Building: A Case Study of Grade 1

Zhu, G., Donoahue, Z., Fan, M., Zijlstra, B., & Scardamalia, M. (2019, April). Emotional and cognitive engagement in Knowledge Building circles: A case study of grade 1 students. Poster presented at the American Education Research Association (AERA). Toronto, Ontario.

Knowledge Building is a socio-constructivist approach that advocates students take collective responsibility for improving ideas. Teachers practicing Knowledge Building report it contributes to students’ emotional and cognitive engagement. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this claim. Using mixed research methods, we explored how a Grade 1 class emotionally and cognitively engaged in Knowledge Building, and what emotions and idea improvement moves characterize productive and struggling Knowledge Building moments. The results show evidence of the practice of Knowledge Building principles; most of the students engaged in Knowledge Building emotionally and cognitively; and multiple speaking turns, different emotions, and diverse idea improvement moves suggest progressive Knowledge Building discourse, and challenge is mainly related to technical issues.

Categories
All grades All subjects Grade 2 Science

Idea growth across subjects

Multiple Sources to Support Knowledge Building on Salmon by Grade 2 Students

Nazeem, R., Zhu, G., & Ma, L. (2019, April). Multiple sources to support Knowledge Building on salmon by Grade 2 students. Poster presented at the American Education Research Association (AERA) conference. Toronto, Ontario.

The grade 2s at JICS have been studying salmon for the last few months to understand the growth and change of animals. After exploring some diagrams, the students started wondering about the salmon life cycle, which animals are connected to salmon, and how humans and the environment impact salmon. The salmon tank in the classroom provided opportunities for students to both observe and discuss the life cycle and ideal habitat of Atlantic salmon. Over the months of inquiry, the students engaged in a rich variety of learning experiences, including: discussing their ideas, new learning and changes to their thinking in Knowledge Building circles; sharing new information from related storybooks and information texts; writing and building onto ideas in Knowledge Forum (KF); reflecting on visits from experts through KF or in small groups; and showing their thinking about habitats and human impact through drawing on KF and building with various materials. Early in their exploration, the students found a diagram that did not reflect all the stages of the Atlantic Salmon’s life cycle. The children decided to create a new diagram that reflected all the stages, as well as other important information they had learned about Atlantic Salmon. With support from their Art teacher, the children began to brainstorm ideas of how to display their learning and organize their thinking. In addition to this art extension, the students’ literacy program focused on developing research skills as the students researched predators of Atlantic Salmon. Social studies conversations focused on how Indigenous peoples used Atlantic Salmon and human impact on the salmon’s habitat (focusing on water contamination and waste management). This poster shows how idea improvement, meta-discourse, and students’ excitement and empathy is salient in the class.

Categories
All grades All subjects Junior Kindergarten Science

How can young students incorporate Knowledge Building as easily adaptable principles as a part of their learning trajectories to build a base block in order to continue knowledge building in higher years?

The Butterfly Effect: Knowledge Building in Kindergarten. Instilling Practices to set up Life Long Knowledge Building Learning

Costa, S., Zhu, G., & Osorio, D. (2019 June). The butterfly effect: Knowledge Building in Kindergarten. Instilling practices to set up life long Knowledge Building learning. Poster presentation at the 2019 Knowledge Building Summer Institute -Around the World: “Knowledge Building Practices and Technology for Global Hubs of Innovation”, June 17-20, Lyon, France.

This exploratory Pilot study examines 22 Junior Kindergarten Students scientific discourse from Hub of Innovation site, over eight weeks of a Knowledge Building intervention, while examining a unit on Butterfly Life cycles. The authors chose to examine this issue as it is a strong demonstration of how Knowledge Building is with young students without the usage of Knowledge Forum technology. The purpose of this poster is to demonstrate Junior Kindergarten’s scientific inquiry on the life cycle of butterflies, and how Knowledge Building Principles are incorporated into a Junior Kindergarten class, and this poster will demonstrate some analytics of results of the discourse from student’s learning and the Knowledge Building principles they incorporated. Knowledge building started in the earlier years have student comfortable with sharing their ideas, and exploring discourse and concepts while children can be coinvestigators (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1983 )

Many educational specialists newly introduced to Knowledge Building believe that Knowledge Forum execution is in tandem to(the online software which utilizes Knowledge Building Pedagogy). This assumption would lead out very young students who are grasping reading and writing skills and building foundational, and that very young students actually cannot do Knowledge Building as they cannot use Knowledge Forum. By incorporating Knowledge Building in Junior Kindergarten, learning is transformed into a frontier to identify and transform a student’s schema. Students can have theories as young as the age of four in trying to decipher and understand their world from a social, scientific, historical, and environmental perspective. The research question is: how can young students incorporate Knowledge Building as easily adaptable principles as a part of their learning trajectories to build a base block in order to continue knowledge building in higher years?