Creative thinking, and assessment

"The role of observation is to seed thinking'

During my short practicum I was given the opportunity to teach about endothermic and exothermic reactions. When I made the lab report for the students to follow I only wanted them to observe what happens when the reaction begins. Qualitative observations were the most important part about this lab. To me, the seed is change. What changes are happening that we are able to observe. I think change can have lots of different perspectives and opinions. The thought process of someone that is beginning to learn compared to someone that has a deeper though process is vastly different. Assessment could be based on the growth of an individual, on the dedication students put into the content to learn. Students will change through time and there is such a think as early and late bloomers. If a teacher can facilitate a students interest in change instead of aiming for an answer, it could change the way people approach learning.

"In the early stages. words can kill. They label, making things familiar, and make the world safe again"

Labeling is to name with absolute certainty that they know what an idea is. It is satisfying to say that we know that something is 100%, but that causes a problem, it leaves no room for forward thinking or different ideas. No room for change, or the possibility that it could be something else. I think it is still important to observe the known, and to be curious about it. To experience the same experience other researchers did and draw similar conclusions is to learn. I think it would be analogous to reading about the Grand Canyon and studying it, compared to being there and seeing it. I think its exciting to challenge older theories, or to want to find another method to another solution. There does not always need to be one definitive right method. I think to label early on is to stop any kind of inquiry. This is not to say the process is wrong, but to observe the world requires some creativity at observing it. Nature it self is very creative, and to study and learn it requires a lot of growth. Art can have deeper meaning  and draw emotions of we were to study the brushwork or the paints used and to be able to see what kind of difficulties the artist confronted when making art. I would like to think science does this too.

"Our problems are caused by our efforts to deal with the problem. The more we throw ourselves at it, the worse it gets. "

I think I would have appreciated this quote in my first degree. Approaching difficult things can tunnel vision us into imagining what the problem actually is. At times its simpler then we believe it is, but we tend to want to find that there is something complicated that we are missing. There is a want that the problem is something that we do not know, or something that is difficult that we are missing out on when reality, we may have just wrote the problem down incorrectly. During the practicum I observed many students during tutorials before retesting dates. Most of the time it was silly mistakes such as not noticing the Y axis of the graphs were different, or they copied the problem from the chalk board wrong, or even trying to balance an equation thinking only the products can change. I learned and read into standard based grading, and I would like to think that it is a good solution for students to correct any mistakes they have made in the past. Each quiz/test can be split into standards that should be known for the course. Students can do great in some, but poorly on others. During tutorials, lunch, and after school they can correct the mistakes and retest on those specific areas instead of re writing an entire test. It seems much more accurate as well since students will know what specific area they are getting incorrect.