Title: Story-based teaching in Science & Mathematics

Kay Yong, Khoo BSc.(MU); MSc.(ITE) (HKU); EdD(HKU)

Discussions

How children come to know

new knowledge

Story Telling & Linking to

Knowledge

Classroom’s group learning and discussions

The contemporary

issuesThe ideas of

STEAM

Teacher’s role to seek

knowledge in stories

Children’s workbooks

The Activity Theory (Engestrom, 1987) Pedagogy

The framework for enacting viewing skills to acquire new knowledge (Kay Yong, 2016)

Content Knowledge

Attention Perception Concept formation Memory Learning

STEM or STEAM

This points to a disparity between the skills that worker have and those that employers need. In order to succeed in the information age, students need to develop 21st century skills, particularly the higher order thinking skills. This aspect of education must start from a very young age (Costello, 2013).

In many preschool programs and kindergartens, young children are engaged in filling out worksheet, reading from flash cards, or reciting numbers in rote fashion.But just because young children can do those things, in a normative sense, is not sufficient justification for requiring them to do so.

The developmental question is not “What can children do?” Rather, it is “What should children do that best serves their development and learning in the long term?

The process of the learning and not the product that matters!

Soon after Edison revealed his earth-shattering invention, a French reporter asked, “Mr. Edison, how did it feel to fail 999 times?” As the story goes, Thomas Edison just smiled and replied, “Young man, I have not failed 999 times. I have simply found 999 ways how not to create a light bulb.”

Engineering

Art /Creative & Divergent thinking

Science /Come to know…

It is important to remember that technology did not begin in the digital age.People have been inventing and using tools for millennia, and we continue to use these simple devices in our daily life.

Technology…

..engages students by 1. Creating the learning environment where the problem-solving situation emerges from the

interactions/involvement of the participants(learners). 2. Allowing young learners to involve in non-routine problem-solving processes with their choice

of methods. 3. Putting them in a group. In this learning environment, students need to negotiate and apply

new strategies repeatedly with the objective being the advancement of their competency in addition and subtraction problem solving (Boaler & GReeno, 2000; Stahl, Rosé, & Goggins, 2011).

4. Making the steps visible to the learners. Collaboration on a challenging problem cannot be automatically initiated within groups. The utilisation of the process of negotiation to seek the new knowledge (i.e., the correct strategies) must be made visible to the learners during their collaborative efforts.

Mathematics…

COGNITIVE ASSOCIATIVE AUTONOMOUS

3 STAGES OF LEARNING

Reference:

Fitts, P. M., & Posner, M. I. (1967). Human performance.

2 31

The training outputs of the children

• Speak in scientific manners.

• Work independently.

• Demonstrate the criteria of STEAM.

• Work and communicate in group.

• Gain appropriate living skills.

Some ideas in setting your mathematics

worksheets

Add a good story plot to learn mathematics -1

Add a good story plot to learn mathematics-2

Add a good story plot to learn Science (recyclable items)-1

Add a good story plot to learn Science (recyclable items)-1

References:

Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamäki, R. L. (1999). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge University Press.

Kay Yong, K. (2016). Enacting app-based learning activities with viewing and representing skills in preschool mathematics lessons. In D. Churchill, J. Lu, T. K. F. Chiu, & B. Fox (Eds.), Mobile Learning Design: Theories and Applications. Hong Kong: Springer.