CTL’s free digital courseware embeds a set of research-based methods which are designed in improve student achievement.

Social Constructivism

Social Constructivism is the notion that people construct knowledge through group interaction.  In the classroom this translates to groups of students working together towards a common goal.  While individual students are ultimately responsible for demonstrating mastery, the group interaction speeds up learning.

How does social constructivism change a teacher’s role in the classroom?

Direct Instruction

Since students cannot be expected to discover all of math and science on their own, and in fact, it took the world’s brightest minds more than 2000 years to do so, teachers still need to use direct instruction.  Typical PSI and PMI classrooms use about 5-10 minutes of direct instruction to introduce a new topic.  At the end of that time, students work together in groups to solve problems (i.e. social constructivism).

What’s wrong with traditional lecture? [coming soon]

Formative Assessment

Teachers use embedded, live formative assessment to know when their students have completed their work, and if they understood the topic.  A set of questions follows every new topic in each IWB presentation.  After a teacher introduces the new topic, students work in their groups to solve the problems and are then each responsible for entering their answer into a polling device, called a student responder.  These results are immediately available to the teacher and helps a teacher make a decision as to how to proceed- do they reteach, move on to the next problem, or skip the next problem altogether.

An example of formative assessment using student responders [coming soon]

The Benefits and Implications to Formative Assessment using Student Responders [coming soon]

Summative Assessment

Grades are based only on what students know and can do- tests, quizzes, and labs.  This creates an objective grade increasing the correlation of a student’s grade with End of Course (EOC) tests such as Advanced Placement (AP).  Class participation and homework are encouraged components to learning, but are not included in a student’s grade.  Furthermore, if a student does not perform well, he or she can retake any assessment and get the higher grade.  Students can then learn from their mistakes which results in more learning.

Why would students do homework if it doesn’t count? [coming soon]

Next:  The use of Technology