- Planning instruction
Modeling in this second sense is not about altering students’ behavior, but about increasing their understanding
of a newly learned idea, theory, or phenomenon. The model itself uses objects or events that are already familiar to
students—simple balls and their behavior when colliding—and in this way supports students’ learning of new,
unfamiliar material. Not every new concept or idea lends itself to such modeling, but many do: students can create
models of unfamiliar animals, for example, or of medieval castles, or of ecological systems. Two-dimensional
models—essentially drawings—can also be helpful: students can illustrate literature or historical events, or make
maps of their own neighborhoods. The choice of model depends largely on the specific curriculum goals which the
teacher needs to accomplish at a particular time.
Activating prior knowledge
Another way to connect curriculum goals to students’ experience is by activating prior knowledge, a term
that refers to encouraging students to recall what they know already about new material being learned. Various
formats for activating prior knowledge are possible. When introducing a unit about how biologists classify animal
and plant species, for example, a teacher can invite students to discuss how they already classify different kinds of
plants and animals. Having highlighted this informal knowledge, the teacher can then explore how the same species
are classified by biological scientists, and compare the scientists’ classification schemes to the students’ own
schemes. The activation does not have to happen orally, as in this example; a teacher can also ask students to write
down as many distinct types of animals and plants that they can think of, and then ask students to diagram or map
their relationships—essentially creating a concept map like the ones we described in Chapter 8 (Gurlitt, et al.,
2006). Whatever the strategy used, activation helps by making students’ prior knowledge or experience conscious
and therefore easier to link to new concepts or information.
Anticipating preconceptions of students
Ironically, activating students’ prior knowledge can be a mixed blessing if some of the prior knowledge is
misleading or downright wrong. Misleading or erroneous knowledge is especially common among young students,
but it can happen at any grade level. A kindergarten child may think that the sun literally “rises” in the morning,
since she often hears adults use this expression, or that the earth is flat because it obviously looks flat. But a high
school student may mistakenly believe that large objects (a boulder) fall faster than small ones (a pebble), or that a
heavy object dropped (not thrown) from a moving car window will fall straight down instead of traveling laterally
alongside the car while it falls.
Because misconceptions are quite common among students and even among adults, teachers are more effective
if they can anticipate preconceptions of students wherever possible. The task is twofold. First the teacher
must know or at least guess students’ preconceptions as much as possible in advance, so that she can design
learning activities to counteract and revise their thinking. Some preconceptions have been well-documented by
educational research and therefore can in principle be anticipated easily—though they may still sometimes take a
teacher by surprise during a busy activity or lesson (Tanner & Allen, 2005; Chiu & Lin, 2005). Exhibit 9.8 lists a few
of these common preconceptions. Others may be unique to particular students, however, and a teacher may only by
able to learn of them through experience—by listening carefully to what students say and write and by watching
what they do. A few preconceptions may be so ingrained or tied to other, more deeply held beliefs that students may
resist giving them up, either consciously or unconsciously. It may be hard, for example, for some students to give up