Chapter 8 QTC

Consider a lesson plan you might use. Which metacognitive skills/abilities are involved as students gain facility/knowledge in this domain? Think of an activity or lesson component that explicityly teaches one or more metacognitive and one or more problem solving skills.

   A lesson plan I have been developing is for a 6th grade Social Studies classroom. The goal of the lesson is to have my students research different cultures and create a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast two of their choice. It is important for these students to have the skill of comparing and contrasting, not just for Social Studies, but any subject. Also for part of this lesson, students will be in small groups discussing the main components of culture, and defining what culture means. Preparing for the activity will be done collaboratively, but students will work alone of the Venn Diagrams so they can use their individuality and creativty on it. A final part of the lesson will be having someone from a different culture come into the classroom and give a little presetnation on themselves and what their culture is about. This will give my students the opportunity to discover what other cultures may look like first hand.

   There are metacoginitive skills I expect to see from my students and their work. One skill is for them  use the knowledge they know about their culture, and apply it when thinking about what is important in another culture. For example, they already know what kind of clothes we wear, food we eat, our government structure, etc. Since they already know what the components of our culture are, they can apply what they know is "part" of a culture to research it in a different part of the world. In other words, they already know the background information, which they need to apply to gain new knowledge (the components of a different culture). Students will also gain knowledge from researching different parts of the world, and applying it to create their own Venn Diagram. They will be free to choose any cultures and express what they know about each one in the activity. Students will have to think about why cultures may be different. Why is the culture is Japan so different from that of India? Why are there so many different cultures? Where did it all start? I believe these types of questions will arise in many of my students and will make them want to research and discover more about what they still want to know.

   Another asect of Social Studies is learning about the different religions of the world. One activity I will have my students do is to create a project displaying the different religions. First, students will have to decide what method they want to use for the project. For example, will they create a powerpoint, a poster, a collage, etc. I want my students to be creative with this project, but also have to think about how they will present it to the class. Second, they must decide where they are going to get their information, and decide what is most important for the class to know about the religion they have been assigned. We will have previously discussed what they should know about a relgion in general, so I would hope that they could take the information I have presented and create something with that knowledge on their own. Although there will be more aspects to this project, these are what I believe to be the most important metacognitive and problem-solving skills they will gain from the activity.