Relational understanding....

2)      April 2

Relational Understanding  by Richard Skemp (1978) measure the understanding of the quality and quantity of connection at the two end of the continuum –Knowing what to do and why – to an  instrumental understanding ; doing something without understanding.

• Procedural understanding is simply doing something without understanding
• Conceptual understanding helps children relate new ideas to what is already contexture in them minds.

This is based on the theory of constructivism – knowledge has to be constructed by the learners.

 Authentic Assessment:

Use assessment to plan for learning experience and instruction, including use of varied strategies that provide a comprehensive picture of each child’s progress and needs. Teachers need to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. Use of teacher designed measures to devise the level of learning.  Early Childhood teachers use concrete tasks, oral questions for informal assessment with young children. Assessment can be conducted while young children engage in independent tasks. Use tasks or oral responses can be conducted during a teaching activity, as part of learning experience enabling the teacher to make more accurate decisions for the instruction of individual students. The teacher uses observation, tasks, and manipulative activities to determine a child’s progress in learning.  Teacher need to know the root cause why the child cannot count.

Teachers must make instructional decisions, both immediate and long term. They must decide how long to spend on a particular math unit. They can use individual task and ongoing observation of class progress, to provide more information that will help them to decide whether to include more experiences, use review activities, skip planned activities or conclude the current topic and move on to a new one.

 @ Scholastic Teaching Resource