Lower Level: In your own words, define what you believe to be a community of learners. What experience have you had with this concept (in school, outside of school, in placements)?
Upper Level: Using you personal definition and the experiences that you have had, list some pros and cons that can come from developing and implementing a community of learners in the classroom. What are some difficulties that you as the teacher may face when turning your classroom into a facilitative learning community?
Lower Level:
ReplyDeleteA community of learners is a classroom community where everyone, both the students and the teachers, works together to build up their knowledge. When I was in High School I was on the Yearbook staff and I feel as though we were a community of learners. We all worked together as equals and created something from scratch. It was a learning and growing experience for all of us, including the teacher.
Higher Level:
I think the main pro of a community of learners is that everyone is working together and building off of each other. This way they can get much further than they could individually. The biggest con that I could see from a community of learners would be that the students will not contribute equally and some of them will learn less because they are not putting forth the effort. As a teacher I think the most difficult thing to do would be to figure out a way to plan community learning where everyone would contribute sufficiently and efficiently. If the teacher could figure this out early they could avoid a lot of the problems in the long run.
I think your questions fit well into the upper and lower level categories you have placed them in. I think that the lower level question involves remembering and understanding. I think the higher level question involves analyzing and evaluating.