EdPsych 401 Blog Post 6: Constructivism

            If I could choose one application from the Constructivism chapter to implement in my high school English class, I think I would assign a project-based authentic activity to my students.  The project would be this: students would have to write and work together to produce a classroom “newspaper.”  Although the article is a little dated, Hanna (1923) provides a great structure for such a journalistic project.  For this authentic activity, students will have to pretend that they are part of a newspaper staff.  Some students will be assigned by me to be editors; there will be an editor-in-chief, a literary editor, a sports editor, a society editor, etc.  These editors will then have reporters working under them.  Literary reporters will have to find a news story going on in the school and write a 500-600 word article about it; sports reporters will have to attend a school sporting event and write a 500-600 word report about the event; a society reporter will have to write a 500-600 word article discussing social events going on in the school that week.  From this project, the “reporters” will be able to exercise the writing and grammar skills they have been learning in class while, at the same time, trying to write an interesting article targeted to a specific audience.  The “editors” will take up and read each article their reporters have written, decide which articles are the most interesting and well-written, and proofread and correct the articles for any grammar errors they may have.  Then, all of the chosen and corrected articles will be compiled into one class newspaper that all of the students will be able to read.  The goal of this project is not to teach journalistic behaviors (Hanna, 1923).  Rather, the goal is to get students to practice using the writing skills they’ve learned in class to write an effective informational article, and to get editors to learn to look for writing mistakes in pieces of work.  Hopefully, the students will also find the project enjoyable and fun.

            At first, my students appear extremely anxious about this project.  Many of the students are very nervous about writing an article that will be included in a “newspaper” that everyone in the class will be able to read.  I try to relieve some of this anxiety by telling them that there is no one correct way to go about doing this activity, and that, outside of doing a little research and writing a piece that is 500-600 words long, they are relatively free to do what they want; I will also let them know that I will be available any time that they need help brainstorming ideas or researching topics (Ormrod, 2011).

            A few obstacles arise:

            —Students get a little confused as to what their positions are and what they are supposed to do.  Therefore, after the positions are assigned to the students, I give each student a concept map in which their position and duty is labeled, and they are able to see how their position is tied to the positions of other students—in other words, a sports reporter will see who they are supposed to report to when their article is finished. 

            —Some reporters in the class don’t know what to write about for their article.  I work with these students and help them brainstorm ideas.  With some of the students, we develop a “wagon wheel organizer.”  In the middle of the organizer, the student writes inside a big circle what topic they are writing about.  Connected to this bigger circle will be smaller circles in which the student will identify possible aspects of the topic they think are important to the larger topic, and which might should be discussed in-depth.

Hanna, O. M. (1923). The class newspaper. The English journal, 12 (3), pp. 205-207.

Ormrod, J. (2011). Educational psychology: Developing learners (7^th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.