How to get students to build meaning

There’s plenty of talk about constructivist learning but very little about the tools to make it happen. Well, here’s one that’s perfect for the job. It’s called the Inductive Tower.

As its title states, this Graphic Organiser catapults students into inductive learning. Most learning is deductive: the teacher tells the students the principles or rules, and they work from that to identify the details. That’s a very effective way to both teach and learn but it isn’t the only way.

Inductive learning is where students start with the details and, through experimentation and hypothesis, discover the principles and rules. 

The Inductive Tower works through categorisation, step–by–step from the bottom, right up towards the top, over–arching principles.

I’ll talk you through the stages by referring to the example on global warming. As you can see at the bottom are a series of objective measures on certain aspects of the environment.

Now comes the inductive thinking. Connect some of these items together if they have something in common. Experiment, as there may well be several alternative ways in which they are similar.

Then find a word or phrase that captures these shared characteristics. This establishes level 2.

In the example you can see that the Larsen Ice Shelf and the Ward Ice Shelf (level 1) both had chunks of ice breaking off (level 2).  

This process continues upward until the primary characteristic is identified.

This process helps students: 

• Slows down impulsive responses
• Exposes jumping to conclusions
• Demonstrates and records the group’s thinking
• Demands reasons and explanations for assertions
• Scaffolds logic thinking in graduated steps
• Encourages curiosity and hypothesising

References:

Joyce, B et al (2000) Models of Learning—Tools for Teaching, Buckingham: Open University Press

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