Constructivism

What does constructivism mean?
Do you guys remember the way you learned when you were in primary or secondary school?I remembered that all teachers had the same approach of teaching.They all entered the class,asked some students about the previous lesson and then they explicitly stated:''Now,I am going to explain the new lesson to you.Teachers were all the same just because they shared a common approach of teaching.They would just give us information and then ask us to reproduce that information.The only teacher who was different was my high school English teacher.He didn't use to ask us to repeat text book information or list grammatical rules,but would make us discover rules,involve us in group working and each one of us had his own portfolio where we used to keep our own creative projects.He used peer-editing,peer-feedback and onced we learned vocabulary road words going to the road and observe things in practice.We were very involved in the class and we were all the time helping each other,even outside the classroom.That's the perfect example I can give to you as how to practically make use of constructivism.I think that's the approach through which you help learners how to learn even in their own.Constructivism makes the learning process interactive and allows multiple interpretations of learning.Moreover,constructivism helps students to express understanding through a variety of ways.Our role as teachers would be to create authentic and real world environments as often and as much as possible.I still can remember what roundabout,zebra crossing and crossroad mean because we saw them concretely.
A useful advice I want to share with you is that when we introduce new information to our students,first we should try to brainstorm ideas based on students knowledge and experience.In my opinion,seeking different students'points of view and then making use of those ideas is very effective.We will help our students build new knowledge based on what they already know.They will learn around their primary concepts.Actually,that is the way we learn and build knowledge.Piaget claimed that humans learn through the construction of one logical structure after another.I totally agree with his claim.My mom who is a teacher has always advised me to learn new things by understanding and not by memorizing them.Using constructivism has helped me to increase knowledge and sometimes I have added new information to my previous one and in other cases I have just changed my viewpoints and built another scheme.
Another important aspect of a constructivist classroom is collaboration among students.For example,you may use pair share when students have to ask different questions.Another way could be to split the whole class in two major groups when you have for example,debating as an activity.Creating diversity groups is also efficient because helps students develop empathy among each other due to their different cultural and educational backgrounds.
When we think of using cooperative learning we should have not only specific goals but also assign specific roles to all memebers of the group.That way,each one of them will be involved in the task.They will achieve their common goal through their individuial responsibilities.I think that is very important.
I am really looking forward to using both constructivism and collaborative learning in the classroom as a future teacher.


Thank you for your attention.