This is a presentation in a CSCL2011 Symposium: Getting Started and Sustaining Knowledge Building. It introduces how to get knowledge building started in kindergarten and grade one classes.

1. +
Getting Started and Sustaining
Knowledge Building
CSCL 2011, July 4-8, Hong Kong, China

2. +
Presenters:
 Knowledge Building in Senior Kindergarten and Grade 1
Maria Chuy, Christian Tarchi, Monica Resendes & Bodong Chen
 Challenges and strategies for effective Knowledge Building in
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elementary school: Principals’ perspective
Elizabeth Morley & Richard Messina
 Designing a Knowledge Building curriculum
Katerine Bielaczyc & Teachers from Townsville Primary School,
Singapore
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 Knowledge Building International: Open Educational Courses,
Innovation, and Resources
Marlene Scardamalia, Carl Bereiter, Monica Resendes & Stian Haklev
 Discussion by Jianwei Zhang

3. +
Knowledge Building in Senior
Kindergarten and Grade 1
Maria Chuy, Christian Tarchi, Monica Resendes & Bodong Chen
Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology,
OISE/University of Toronto, Canada

4. + Knowledge Building and
Knowledge Age
 Knowledge B ildi pedagogy (S d
K l d Building d (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1996;
li B it 1996
2003) offers a Knowledge Age framework for education by
supporting students’ capacity for innovation.
 Instead of simply learning about science, history, literature,
etc., students engage ideas as scientists, historians, writers, and
so forth
forth.
 They work in a community, building on each other’s
knowledge, exploring and refining each other s theories, and
other’s
engaging in the progressive improvement of their ideas. This
knowledge work is supported by Knowledge Forum
(
(Scardamalia, 2004).
, )
 Teachers who are eager to explore KB pedagogy and KF
technology in their classrooms may not know where to begin…

5. +
How and when do we get started
with Knowledge Building?
 KB talk can be initiated as early as Kindergarten
 At The Laboratory School at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child
Study (Toronto, Canada), children are introduced to the knowledge
building principles when they first enter the school at the age of
three
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 The process of playing with ideas is natural in children, and is
often exhibited as soon as children learn to speak
 Expression and discussion of students’ ideas can be vehicles to
deeper knowledge and understanding
 So-called “misconceptions” are better thought of as “improvable
ideas
ideas” and basis for conceptual change rather than “mistakes.”
mistakes.

6. + Senior Kindergarten:
Leaves are falling down because it is Fall
Example
 The season is Fall and the teacher suggests
the children begin to look at trees
 It is a process that takes place over many
weeks – a period of time that allows young
children to note and observe each stage of
the trees’ change
 The children are observing related variables:
temperature changing, rainfall, or the wind
blowing stronger
 And all of these changes are occurring right
outside the door of each child’s home and
school -- an authentic and real situation that
can foster the creation of ideas on natural
phenomena

7. + KB in Senior Kindergarten
 By experiencing the pattern observation-
discussion-experiment-discussion, children learn
that all ideas are improvable and that each step
helps to refine theories and, at the same time,
generate new questions.
 The ideas offered by individuals become
deliberately “detached” from the student so that
they are “owned” by the group as a whole, rather
than an individual.
 The continuous reference to the ideas of the
group creates a psychologically safe environment
for the students, where they feel free to express Authoritative sources
their ideas without immediately being labeled
“right” or “wrong”, and then work on those ideas
to improve their quality, coherence, and utility
 At a certain point of KB Discourse, students begin
Discourse
to address high-level ideas, calling into question
difficult concepts, such as oxygen or chlorophyll.
At this stage, the use of authoritative sources can
be introduced

8. + Grade 1:
Towards Knowledge Forum
 In order to be improved, ideas need to be recorded, revised and
synthesized. Knowledge Forum represents a perfect community
workspace for this.
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 KF can be used as soon as students start to read and write, notably during
the Grade 1 year (6-7 years old)
 Since the cognitive cost of writing and reading processes is very high, it
is important to develop these processes in a context that is engaging and
somehow “lived” by the students
lived
 Before discussing it on KF, the topic could be worked through and used in
various contexts, explored and questioned, and connected with students’
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intuitions, habits and their real world
 In this way, writing and reading enter into the process of KB naturally, as a
logical
l i l continuation of the work on ideas
ti ti f th k id

9. + Introducing KF in grade 1
Example
 The teacher invites students to sit in a circle, while she is
circle
projecting a blank Knowledge Forum view onto a big
screen
 The teacher explained that every child at the school has
such a space to preserve and improve his/her ideas
 Together the teacher and children decide on the name of
the new view (How leaves change color ?) KF view
 Individual work: the teacher asks each student to tell
his/her best theory that explained why leaves change color
 The teacher types everything the child is saying into a KF
note under the student’s name
 The teacher asks clarifying questions, but does not push
 The teacher pays particular attention to the titles of the
notes
 Students
St d t are f
free t go i any di ti with th i id
to in direction ith their ideas

10. + Introducing KF in grade 1
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Example
E l
 With a gentle nudge from their teacher, the
children start to devise experiments that would Experiments
allow them to test their theories
 After experiments, observation, and KB Talks
the teacher types the children’s improved
theories into a “build on note
build on”
 When the children’s reading and writing skills
get stronger, they start to work independently
on the database
 The students are excited about this new
adventure – their theories had their own right to
exist in a community space
 It is clear how excited the children are to read a
“build on” note to their note. This motivates the
children to practice their reading
reading.

11. Idea Progress in Grade 1:
+
November 10 November 27
December 17 January 18
The interplay between work on and off the database is critical in
helping the children engage in idea improvement

12. + To conclude:
An interview with SK and grade 1 teachers from the Dr. Eric
Jackman Institute of Child Study
(Toronto, Canada)
(Movie to be incorporated, about 3min) – Hedieh is working on this:
Questions
 How do you begin a Knowledge Building inquiry?
 How can you stimulate a powerful Knowledge Building
discourse with young students?
 What are the main aspects of Knowledge Building pedagogy
that need to be grasp in order to become a knowledge
building teacher?
b ildi t h ?