We have found that each class does the Problem Generation activity
slightly differently but here we offer what seems to be a simple description
of the activity and encourage other teachers to experiment with this
methodology
and see what works best for them.
First Class Period: the students view the Misison to Mars video,
write down any problems/challenges that come to mind and wait for everyone
to finish. They draw a line under their last problem and watch the video
once again. After the second viewing, activity is repeated. We generally
find that upon a second viewing, the children's amount of problems increase
substantially in both number and quality sine they have a much better idea
of the task.The class breaks up into smaller groups and begins to better define
the problems as well as start the categorization process.
Second Class Period: Each group sorts their problems into self-specified
categories. Then the class categorizes all of the individual sets of problems
into a master set of categories. This will eventually led to the cooperative
teams or expert groups in the next step of THE BASIC MODEL.
Third Class: The kids now decide what group they want to belong to based
on the categories generated. These students then collect the questions
that were put into their category and create a prioritized set of problems
for their category (group). This will be the foundation of the questions
that will guide their research over the next 4-6 weeks.
A list of typical questions that middle school children
have asked in the past during the problem generation phase of the Mission
to Mars unit can be viewed by clicking here. While your own students may pose other problems, we believe
this list gives a good representation of what to expect.
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