Think of an
activity or lesson component that explicitly teaches one or more metacognitive
and one or more problem solving skills.
An activity that I have done with a class before that I absolutely love is based off a lesson about inventions. I would start off with talking about inventions with my students, and asking them if they knew what it means to invent something. This would be used to activate prior knowledge. Then I would read a story called "Incredible Inventions". After this I would begin the activity. I would give students different supplies to work with such as paper, glue, glitter, tape, paper clips, buttons, paper towel tubes etc. and as them to make their own invention. In doing this, students are working with metacognitive skills and problem solving skills. Students are thinking about using materials they are farmilar with to create something no one else has ever created before. This gives students a chance to be creative why building knowledge on what they already know with the given materials. Students will have to critcally think and use problem solving skills to create their own invention. Students will have to use problem solving skills like breaking the problem into two or more subproblems. Since I will provied them with tools they are farmilar with they will have to look at all of the materials activate prior knowledge and recognize what they are normally used for, and then brainstorm different ways to use the materials in a way that has never been done before. An acitivity that involves problem solving and thinking outside of the box like this allows students to think divergently and creatively. This activity provides students with a great deal of metacognition or thinking about thinking. Since students are inventing something new they will have to be thinking about what they are thinking about inventing!
what a cute idea to think about inventions. I would love to do this activity with my preschoolers right now. I bet they would and could come up with some pretty awesome ideas and creations. Good idea!
ReplyDeleteChristina,
ReplyDeleteI love that you thought of a problem solving activity! These were always my favorite activities to do in school, and that played a big role in why I chose to major in engineering. I think it is so important to help our students learn problem solving skills because they will need them in order to be successful in life. I also think that your activity is great because it could be adapted for so many different ages. Younger kids would love the open ended problem of just creating any type of invention. For older students, you could even give them a specific problem to solve with the given materials. It would be interesting to see how many different solutions they came up with.