Connecting Literacy to Firsthand Experiences

Bernie Zubrowski
Education Development Center

What is the relationship between firsthand experience and the development of literacy skills? How can the teacher or curriculum developer provide pedagogical structures to move students from the sensory engagement of a phenomenon to the development of an explicit conceptual understanding of concepts related to the phenomenon? There will be four parts to this session. Participants will briefly explore how water can be moved from one container to another using a special siphon arrangement. They will observe a video of two students exploring with this siphon arrangement. Then they will consider the advantages and disadvantages of different pedagogical approaches for bringing about science conceptual understanding about the siphon system. These different approaches will then be proposed as a continuum for instruction exemplifying the idea of pedagogical flow.

presentation documents


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