Goals of Guided
Discovery
- To excite children about classroom materials
- To help children explore materials with confidence and imagination and build a repertoire of constructive ways to use the materials in their academic learning
- To enable children to make independent and purposeful choices
- To establish and teach norms and routines for the use, care, and storage of materials
Guided Discovery Benefits Learning
Guided Discovery has a deep impact on children’s learning.
Children get interested in classroom materials and learn how to use them
creatively in their academic work. They have opportunities to stretch their
thinking and work independently. Perhaps most importantly, children are at the
center of the process. Every aspect of Guided Discovery encourages children to
offer ideas, act on them, and share the results of their work with others,
which stimulates everyone’s thinking about future uses of the material.
Step One: Introduction and Naming
One
of the goals of step one is to get children interested in the material. One way
teachers do this—particularly with younger children—is to create a mystery.
This engages children’s thinking and helps them see familiar materials with
fresh eyes.
But
materials don’t always need to be hidden inside packages, and introductions
don’t always need to take the form of mysteries. The teacher’s tone of voice
and the way s/he holds the material can catch children’s attention. To do this,
teachers use open-ended questions that encourage children to think about they’re
past experiences with the material and to share current observations. Questions
such as “How have you used
dictionaries so far?”, “What might be in this box? What are your clues?”, “What
do you know about markers?”, and “Look closely at your ruler. What’s one thing you
notice?” are all examples of open-ended questions.
Open-ended
questions are at the heart of Guided Discovery, occurring in every step. When
teachers ask an open-ended question, they are looking for a reasoned, relevant
response rather than one “correct” answer. By listening without judgment to a
range of answers, the teacher says, “You have valuable experience and ideas
that we want to hear about.”
Step Two: Generating and Modeling Students’ Ideas
In
step two, the teacher invites children to think through how to use the
material. Teachers can begin with an open-ended question to get children
thinking. When the brainstorming falters, she/he challenges the students to go
beyond their first ideas. She/he uses the phrase “I wonder” so that the
challenge seems fun rather than stressful.
After
the children name ideas for using the material, the teacher invites them to
model some of the uses:
There
are many situations during a typical day when a teacher needs to show students
the correct way to do something (for example, the safe way to carry scissors).
However, during Guided Discovery teachers turn to the students to model their
own ideas. This sends the message that the teacher values the children’s ideas
for using the material creatively and appropriately and trusts their ability to
do so. As several children step forward to shape clay or draw a design with
markers or look up a word in the dictionary, everyone in the class observes and
learns.
Step Three: Exploration and Experimentation
After
students have generated a list of ideas and a few children have modeled ideas,
it’s time for children to independently explore the material. They tend to
begin trying what was modeled. But with encouragement, they’ll soon start
experimenting with new ideas. Although the teacher sets some limits on the
task, the children still can make choices about how to do the task. They learn
to turn to their own and their classmates’ resources rather than always looking
to the teacher.
Step Four: Sharing Exploratory Work
There
are many opportunities during Guided Discovery for children to learn from each
other: they share and model their ideas, sometimes help each other during
exploration, and at the end of the Guided Discovery they have an opportunity to
share the work they’ve done.
Work-sharing
is always voluntary; in order for children to feel free to experiment, they
need to know they won’t have to make their results public. Teachers can lower
the risk of work-sharing by having the entire group display their designs at
once. The more examples of each other’s work children see, the more opportunity
they have to learn from each other.
Step Five: Cleanup and Care of Materials
In
the final step, the teacher engages the children in thinking through, modeling,
and practicing how they will clean up materials, put them away, and access them
independently at a later time. As in previous steps, it is the children who
generate and model ideas.
Guided Discovery Benefits Learning
Guided Discovery has a deep impact on children’s learning.
Children get interested in classroom materials and learn how to use them
creatively in their academic work. They have opportunities to stretch their
thinking and work independently. Perhaps most importantly, children are at the
center of the process. Every aspect of Guided Discovery encourages children to
offer ideas, act on them, and share the results of their work with others,
which stimulates everyone’s thinking about future uses of the material.
Won’t
this approach take too long? How do we cover all required material if we spend
so much time in teaching concepts?
The guided discovery approach cannot be rushed — students must be allowed to make mistakes, pick wrong choices, and face consequences. This requires more time, but will help learners develop a deep understanding of principles; therefore, learning follow-up material is lot easier and faster.
The guided discovery approach cannot be rushed — students must be allowed to make mistakes, pick wrong choices, and face consequences. This requires more time, but will help learners develop a deep understanding of principles; therefore, learning follow-up material is lot easier and faster.
Why
is this important?
Quite often we hear people say, “don’t reinvent the wheel.” From an educator’s perspective, this notion is completely wrong and often counterproductive. There is no learning if there is no invention that is personally meaningful to a student. Every leaner should be provided an opportunity to reinvent. Guided discovery approach focuses on helping every student to reinvent important concept in their mind. Rote memorization and figuring out the right answer using blind techniques are not the way to develop understanding. Many concepts in science are not intuitive, even though most people believe in them.
Quite often we hear people say, “don’t reinvent the wheel.” From an educator’s perspective, this notion is completely wrong and often counterproductive. There is no learning if there is no invention that is personally meaningful to a student. Every leaner should be provided an opportunity to reinvent. Guided discovery approach focuses on helping every student to reinvent important concept in their mind. Rote memorization and figuring out the right answer using blind techniques are not the way to develop understanding. Many concepts in science are not intuitive, even though most people believe in them.
Consider
the example, why do all objects fall at the same time? When I ask this
question, rephrased “as which object, one heavy and one light, will hit the
ground first when dropped from the same height,” some students answer the
question correctly and others incorrectly. Further probing indicates even the
students who answered correctly have no real understanding. They answered
correctly not because they know this is a tricky question and they’ve heard
that all objects fall at the same time.
We
regularly witness even top performing students (who scored well in AP physics
and calculus) show no understanding. This is dangerous. Real understanding is
essential for success and it comes from experience. The guided discovery is an
effective pedagogical approach that can truly engage learners by providing
authentic learning experiences.
Guided discovery
of dictionaries
