Challenging and Rebuilding Mental Models - Conceptual Models

My students study the road while traveling to the YMCA for swimming lessons. 

Why?

Because they have studied the route, back in the classroom, on Google Earth and are working on their mental map models!

Sometimes we have to break something in order to fix it. When someone visits a doctor for a nose injury, there is a good possibility that their nose will need to be broken again as part of the treatment.

As teachers, we must often go through the process of breaking through the misconceptions and incorrect models that our students have built, in their minds, around an academic concept. These are called mental models. And, we all have them!

What I'm calling a mental model is the representation, or picture, seen, and sometimes "felt," in the mind, when thinking abstractly. For example, the picture you see in your mind when you think about a year divided into months. Is it a line? A circle? A calendar? 

Mental models begin to develop early on in our lives and we test and correct them from then on. By the time my students get to my room, they have all kinds of models that they are using. Many are correct, but some are flawed and can cause problems when learning new concepts. 

Shari's Nerd Corner:

You might be surprised to know that everyone has a slightly different model. What I perceive may not be what you do.

I asked a friend what her model looks like (Yes, I’m nerdy like that!). It took her a minute to understand what I meant but when I asked her to show me where we are right now, (April), she looked down at the place she would put April and pointed at the space in front of her. She described a linear representation that looked like a timeline that repeated every year. When her eyes focused on the space in front of her, I knew she was experiencing what I do. The model is more than a picture. It's an invisible object that she can move and refer to in her mind. 

I suppose my tendency to drift into my Intra-personal Intelligence (Gardner) makes me more aware of these models floating around in my head, but I can't help but notice them! I've been surprised that most people I have asked about their model of a calendar year have taken the time to look and describe it to me. 

The model of a year that I see in my mind looks something like a Ferris Wheel that I travel around during the year. I move counter-clockwise around the wheel as the year goes by. Winter is at the top and summer is at the bottom but don’t ask me for details because the actual visual is a little vague. 

When I mentioned this idea to my sisters last month, one described my model in nearly every detail, which really surprised me, and the other described a timeline model with months in a row. My son describes his as a pie chart. 

What DOES your model look like?

Pondering and Inquiring

The easiest way to get young students used to asking their own inquiry questions is to practice two types of statements. 

1. I noticed...
2. I wonder...

I use these strategies often to help develop the art of questioning to further learning. Bringing in realia, for students to see and feel, makes this process even easier. The statements generated by students push learning further for everyone and can be used during the rest of a unit to tie everything together.

I use inquiry with realia, interesting pictures, reading passages, and informational text.

Below is an article I wrote after visiting Adena's 1st grade classroom. She kept her students wondering, noticing, and learning throughout her unit on pumpkins!

Pondering Pumpkins

It’s a Tuesday afternoon in October and 17 first graders sit on the carpet listening to Mrs. Connelly read from a book called, A Day at the Pumpkin Patch, by Megan Faulkner. Next to her rocking chair is a chart stand with a large piece of paper on it. The paper is covered with sticky notes arranged in groups. Two pumpkins sit on a table; a large one with a stem and a smaller one that is too small for a carved face. She pauses in her reading to refer to a sticky note. “I think this page might have answered one of the questions we had about our class pumpkins last week,” she says.  Then she reads from one of the notes, “I wonder why one is bigger than the other one?” Several hands pop up as a little girl infers that their smaller pumpkin is a “pie” pumpkin. Other students nod, and then, Mrs. Connelly reads on. She stops several more times to think aloud or ask questions. One little girl asks if they can make a pie with their little pumpkin. A boy raises his hand and announces that he wants to plant the seeds and grow more pumpkins in his backyard. A girl volunteers that the word “related” must mean that gourds are kind of like pumpkins.

This isn’t the first day this class has been wondering about pumpkins. Last week, when the two pumpkins arrived in the classroom, the questions and “I wonder” statements flew about the room. Each question was carefully recorded on sticky notes and the class sorted them into groups of questions that might belong together.  They had been reviewing their chart a few minutes before beginning the book so their thinking was current and their minds were looking for answers. As they started the book, Mrs. Connelly had reminded them that they were continuing their research and that is their attitude as they delved into the topic.

 

After finishing the book, the students return to their desks amid conversations with each other about pumpkins at their house or a trip they have taken to a pumpkin patch. They pull out and open their pumpkin journals, which are decorated with colorful pictures of first grade pumpkins. On the inside of each one is bright orange paper on which to write their wonderings and learning. Today, they are beginning their sentences with, “I learned…”

I spend some time visiting with some students about pumpkins as they share with me what they have learned. As I leave the room, I take with me some words I don’t usually hear in a first grade room. Slimy seeds inside the ribbed fruit, tendrils curling around vines, peduncles on top of pumpkins…