Chapter 7- Knowledge Construction

Make a list of the sequence skills necessary for ultimate mastery of the content of your lesson through a constructivist approach?

When teaching a 3rd grade language arts lesson about punctuation and capitalization within a letter, I could definitely use a constructivist approach. We've discussed a lot about authentic activities and their importance in the classroom. After direct instruction and days of practicing punctuation and capitalization in addresses and letters, I would have my students write, address, and mail their own letter. Having my students write this letter will show the importance of the grammar lesson and how it can be applied to the world around my students.  A sequence of skills would be: learning which words need to be capitalized (names, street names, greetings, salutations), learning where punctuation is necessary (comma after the greeting, comma after the city), and lastly writing a letter which is grammatically correct.

Which of these learning activities/skills lend themselves to student's individual or group construction? How might you structure learning activities that lead students to discover these skills/these principles?

The skill of correctly addressing and writing a letter is what contributes to student's individual construction the most because it is a useful skill that will be used for the rest of their life. Because this is an authentic task, it will be more interesting for my students to learn and will be easier to remember.