3.5

I, Jean Piaget, viewed video 1 regarding a common core mathematics lesson for a fourth and fifth grade class.  First, regarding the class structure of fourth and fifth grade students being combined in one instructional space, I caution teachers and educators to consider the development of the students.  It may not be fair for fourth graders to be expected to have the capacity to learn what fifth graders may learn.  However, the lesson on decimals allowed students to build upon their existing schemas.  This was evident especially in the portion where students were sharing with students that had not been part of their original dyad.  This opportunity allowed students to assimilate information from other students’ schemata into their own through collaboration.  Overall, I would have preferred to see more relation to real life situations and the students given time to individually interact with the material; however, some good happened. 

Overall, this activity was interesting, especially because the video we watched was focused on Common Core.  I have heard many arguments for or against Common Core so it was interesting to think about how various theorists might view this style of teaching.  I found it decently easy to step into the role of Piaget because I can agree with many of his ideas; however, I tend to be more of a behaviorist than a constructivist most of the time so I found it difficult to react to some of the other theorists as Piaget would likely react.  Below is the link to our Google Doc.

Google Doc