Constructivism Case Study

1) Both lessons gave the students an opportunity to measure something and they both found a way to get the students interested in what it was they are measuring. One difference is that in the traditional lesson, the teacher simply gave them a yard stick and showed them how to measure. In the second lesson, she let them come up on their own with a way to measure and to figure out on their own why it's important to have standard measurements. Another difference is that the traditional lesson took a lot less time to complete.

2) The drawbacks are that it takes a lot more time to do it. Also, there is a lot more silence when the teacher would be tempted to jump in and help the students out. The benefits are that the students learn the information better. They have to come up with the answers on their own and they will remember the results longer and it will encourage them to think of answers to other problems on their own instead of just hoping someone will give them the answers if they don't know it.

I think that in a lot of ways the benefits are worth the cost, but if it takes away too much class time, they won't learn all the things they need to know for other subjects and topics. I think that for really important things or concepts that are difficult to understand and remember, that taking more time to come up with the answer is worth the extra time.

3) Critical thinking is "the process of systematically examining available information and coming up with conclusions that are based on evidence". The constructivist lesson promotes critical thinking because it allows time for the students to figure out the answers on their own, no matter how long it takes, without the teacher telling them the answer. They have to work together and come up with different theories of what might work, test them, and then evaluate what worked and didn't work and why. Examples of when the students used critical thinking are when the little boy realizes that the boat can't be 3 feet tall because he knows that he is 4 feet tall and the boat is way bigger than him and also when they realized that each time they counted they got a different answer and realized they needed to have a standard size and used the same boy to measure everything.

4) Yes, because it promotes problem solving that could be used outside of the classroom in the real world and not just on that particular assignment.