Three questions to Professor Jolanta Choińska-Mika
- Published on Thursday, 29 March 2012 22:48
A student is not able to solve a problem from the Teaching Tools Database. Does this mean that he/she cannot think for himself/herself? What do we do then?
If a student cannot handle it, it is probably because he is not used to this kind of tasks. These are not difficult problems - they are based on the content of the core curriculum, and so, I hope, are done in the classroom. However, the way in which the student must use his/her knowledge, is actually non-standard. Hence, initially there may be some issues. How to deal with them? By explaining what the objective of the task was and by giving the student another task of similar type. We added comments to each problem that show what they consist in and what it is designed to check. Some comments also contain tips on how to interpret and resolve any issues that students may have with a given problem.
Who are the problems prepared by the IBE aimed at? Is it only the third grade lower secondary school students?
For the third grade students it will be a great way to test their knowledge and prepare for a test of generic skills that awaits them in April. But the problems can be solved also by students of lower grades, for example, when discussing the material to which the task concerned refers. To make the work easier for teachers, the tasks in the Teaching Tools Database have been divided according to the requirements of the curriculum, so they will not have problems with matching the tasks to the lesson topics. In addition, we have prepared a variety of tasks – to solve at home, for tests or to be done during lessons. The last of the mentioned types of tasks requires more time to solve or even help from the teacher. In short, our sets have a broad application, and everything depends on the teacher.
When can we expect tasks for upper secondary schools?
I hope soon, but we prefer to wait with developing them until the concept of the matriculation examination according to the new core curriculum crystallizes. We do not want to have a false start. Meanwhile, I can announce another thing. At the beginning of the next year, a book prepared by the IBE, containing lesson scenarios in history and natural science for secondary school students, comes out. One element of the scenarios are tasks that are included in the Teaching Tools Database. This way we want to create a complete tool – not just for testing students' skills in independent thinking, analysis and argumentation, but also for helping them to develop these skills..
