Professional Development October 3

1. Student Centered Instruction
Lowell- October 3, 2012

3. What is Student Centered Instruction?
• Learning is meaningful when topics are relevant
to students’ lives and interests.
• Thinking about student’s learning
• Focus on how they learn, what they experience,
and how they engage with their learning

4. What is Student Centered Instruction?
Contd.
• Students are actively engaged in constructing
their own knowledge (discovery, inquiry,
problem solving)
• The student learns how to learn- what the
student needs to achieve this.
• Learner is viewed as a knowledge seeker with
constantly changing learning needs.

5. The Look Fors…
Teacher Centered Model Student Centered Model
• Teacher gives information, • Cooperative/peer problem solving
students receive (passive role) • Teacher as a facilitator/guide-asks
questions, plants seeds to further
• Students quiet. Appropriate the exploration
time to talk would be when • Students exchanging ideas and
called upon to answer a justifying their thinking through
question. various forms (physical
• Rote memorization, repetitive representations, visual
practice of same types of representations, verbal)
problems • Problems/Tasks are performance
based; require construction of ideas
• Teacher focused on activities • Teacher’s focus is on the level of
and teacher plan (First we’re understanding and deepening the
going to do this, next this- not understanding.
a lot of thought into why…)

6. The Perfect Grid
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyClxRb0KI
A&feature=channel&list=UL
Please take Notes on the video clip analysis
graphic organizer at your table. Look for examples
of student centered instruction.

7. What did you see that
were examples of student
centered instruction?

8. Constructing Ideas
• Read p. 2: Constructing Ideas (3 paragraphs)
• Discuss with your group an example of your own
new learning and how you developed
understanding by constructing ideas.

9. What does it mean to UNDERSTAND?
Knowledge- Understanding-
You either have or don’t have. The measure of the quality of
connections that an idea has with
existing ideas.
Example:
Fractions- 6/8
Know- Students may be able to label the numerator and denominator
Understand- Can they explain what the 6 and 8 tell us about the fraction?
Know- They know that 6/8 can be reduced to 3/4
Understand- Do they understand that 6/8 and ¾ are identical numbers?
Some students will think that reducing the fraction made it smaller. Those
with better understanding will be able to explain using a variety of models that
they are the same quantities.
Each student brings a different set of dots to his or her knowledge.
Each “understands” in a different way.

10. According to Van De Walle et. al. (2010) in
the real world of problem solving there are
no teachers with answers and no answer
books – doing mathematics is about using
justification as a means of determining if
an answer is correct.

11. Let’s Practice…
1. Choose an upcoming lesson and use
the student centered lens to plan for
your students.
• What do my students know • What is the new learning of
that will be needed for this this lesson and what
lesson? connections will students need
to make to deepen their
understanding?

12. Reflection: exit slip
Is math all about knowing the right
answer?
Traditional model would say yes….
Student Centered Instruction model would say
no….
What do you say??
Please explain your thinking…