So, how can we promote students' understanding?
The first is the teaching mode of "teaching for understanding"
"Teaching for understanding" is a teaching model jointly studied by Zero Project and Harvard University Graduate School of Education in 1990s, and it is a teaching theory dedicated to promoting students' real "understanding". The focus of the teaching theory of "Teaching for Understanding" is not only to promote students' understanding of knowledge itself, but more importantly, to grasp the meaning behind knowledge and the regularity of knowledge learning and improve their learning ability in order to adapt to the complex and changeable society in the future.
The theory of "teaching for understanding" holds that in order to help students realize "understanding", educators should think about four questions ―― what should we teach? What should students know about these topics? What do students need to do to achieve the purpose of learning? How do we grasp the students' learning situation? After thinking about these four questions, the teaching mode of "teaching for understanding" has been formed, which includes four main parts: inspiring topics, understanding goals, understanding activities and continuous evaluation.
Inspirational topic (also called generative topic) should be the core of a subject or a certain field, which is interesting for students and teachers; There are multiple connections with students' experiences inside and outside the school, which is convenient to obtain (there are a lot of available resources to assist students in pursuing their themes).
The understanding goal is not equal to the teaching goal, it describes the content and degree that students will understand, and emphasizes the important subject concepts selected for specific student groups. It should clearly explain what students need to understand and the content of enlightening topics, and it should openly understand the goals to students, and often mention them in the teaching process, so that students can clearly understand their degree of realization of the understanding goals.
Understanding activities are activities that provide students with understanding goals. This activity is to help students achieve their understanding goals and demonstrate their understanding ability. It is the carrier and way for students to learn. It requires students to create new knowledge by reorganizing, extending, inferring, applying and developing existing knowledge.
Continuous evaluation refers to the continuous formal or informal evaluation and feedback of students' performance in the learning process, such as group activity evaluation feedback form or teachers' patrol, teachers' individual guidance to students, etc. Continuous evaluation can help students understand their learning situation, find problems or affirm themselves, so as to better adjust and grasp their learning.
The teaching mode of "teaching for understanding" holds that understanding is holistic and advocates holistic teaching design. In other words, students' real understanding should be holistic, not one-sided or fragmented, which will help students to establish the relationship between knowledge and deeply understand knowledge from micro and macro perspectives.
Practice of National Education under the Teaching Mode of "Teaching for Understanding"
Let's take the third lesson of the second unit of ninth grade ideology and morality as an example to carry out teaching design and promote students' in-depth understanding of national conditions.
(A) "Understanding the basic national conditions" teaching design
(see next page)
(two) the main implementation process and implementation effect
Before studying this lesson, I made a simple survey of the students. Before entering the ninth grade, students have studied history and have a certain understanding of some basic national conditions. They are more interested in national conditions. So, in the first class, I first asked the students this question: "As we all know, we are now in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan. Then, do you know how the national development plan was put forward? If you are a national leader, how do you make a national development plan? "
Hearing this question, the students fell into thinking. After dozens of seconds of silence, the students shared their views and classified them, and found that they can think mainly from two aspects: first, understanding history is the basis for grasping development; Second, proceed from reality and solve practical problems. Finally, I add: Third, we should make clear the medium and long-term tasks and development goals of national development. Phased planning serves the long-term development goals in the future, so we must make clear the direction of future efforts.
Next, I divided the class into three groups and distributed the task list for group cooperation and exploration: independently study the history, present situation and future development goals and tasks of the country with the themes of "past you", "present you" and "future you" respectively. Students can refer to textbooks, online materials or other books, and finally make posters of their learning achievements and make electronic PPT speeches in class. Together with the task list, there is also an "active task evaluation form 1". (See table 1) In this section, I gave students two classes to prepare and two classes to show and communicate. In this way, the former teaching mode of teachers speaking first and students listening later will be transformed into task-driven cooperative learning for students. Of course, students will encounter many difficulties in autonomous learning, especially some important concepts and political terms, such as the primary stage of socialism, the main social contradictions, the party's basic line and so on. Whether in class or after class, students will take the initiative to ask me for help. In them, I saw the enthusiasm for learning and the consciousness of inquiry. What makes me more happy is that my classmates have good grades. They collected a wealth of graphic materials and video materials, explained them carefully, and had beautiful posters, not only with knowledge but also with artistic design.
Through the previous study, the students further understand the basic national conditions of our country. At this time, I reiterate the enlightening topic of this class: "If you are a national leader, how will you make a national development plan?" Then, we will issue a task list for group cooperation and exploration: "Make a national development plan or put forward a national development proposal and give a specific plan", together with "Activity Task Evaluation Table 2". (See Table 2) I gave students two classes of inquiry time and one class of presentation and communication time. The students showed a more rigorous attitude in this activity, and found a lot of information for this, and the group discussion became more intense. In the process of traveling with a group, I found various problems and gave some suggestions. In the exhibition and exchange, some groups did a very good job, boldly conceived, full of new ideas, formulated a complete development plan, and had their own clear arguments; Although some groups failed to put forward a complete development plan, they put forward their own suggestions and improvement plans for a developing problem-water pollution. Although there are still many shortcomings in these plans or schemes of the students, in this activity, the students showed their enthusiasm for learning, concern for the national conditions and sense of responsibility for the country.
Third, reflect on the practice of ethnic education under the teaching mode of "teaching for understanding"
The knowledge of national conditions is really difficult for junior high school students, but how to make students willing to learn, take the initiative to learn something, how to stimulate students' patriotic feelings, sense of ownership and sense of civic responsibility in national conditions education, and how to make students acquire an active learning ability in the changing and developing national conditions in the future all test the educational wisdom of teachers. The teaching mode of "teaching for understanding" pays more attention to students' autonomous cognitive ability and understanding ability. Through teaching activities, students not only acquire knowledge, but also form a real understanding ability to apply what they have learned. Therefore, "teaching for understanding" not only focuses on students' in-depth understanding of knowledge, but also focuses on students' future. This lesson attempts to achieve good educational results by trying the teaching mode of "teaching for understanding"
(A) inspiring questions to stimulate students' interest in inquiry and promote students' in-depth thinking.
"If you were a national leader, how would you make a national development plan?" This enlightening topic is a great challenge for students, which can stimulate students' interest in inquiry and promote students' learning, understanding and flexible application of national conditions knowledge.
(B) vivid and diverse forms of understanding activities to deepen students' understanding of the understanding objectives.
Rich and interesting classroom activities, such as "brainstorming", "national lecture hall" and "simulated meeting room", adopt the forms of group cooperative inquiry, display, lecture and simulated meeting, which break through the conventional learning methods and give students a refreshing feeling. These activities are student-centered and give students a broad learning platform and opportunities for various performances. Teachers play the roles of helpers, encouragers, promoters, guides and companions in students' learning. More importantly, through the activities of "simulation meeting room", students learned how to use the knowledge of national conditions flexibly and learned all the scientific thinking methods of proceeding from reality and integrating theory with practice. In the whole learning process, students' independent inquiry is the main task, and students' continuous exploration and learning are helpful to develop their learning ability.
(C) continuous evaluation to stimulate students' learning motivation and promote students' continuous learning.
In the study of this class, students can constantly get comments from teachers, classmates and themselves, both formal and informal. Formal evaluation helps students to clarify the activity norms and task standards, so as to better participate in and complete activities; Informal evaluation can feedback students' learning situation at any time, which is helpful for students to better adjust their learning.