Bible Students

Eggen and Kauchak (chapter 7)

The integrative model is presenting the information in a model, and guiding the students to understand the difference and organization in the information. For example, a chart can be examined and the information organized by the students. Understanding generalizations and trends can be greatly improved by this. The information is not meant to be remembered, but rather the method for examining the information. The examination is what is important, because the students are able to synthesize information after viewing simple representations of them. 

Critical thinking involves seriously examining information. Students are not very good at critical thinking because they have not had much experience. This means teachers need to progressively expose students to using critical thinking in the classroom, especially through the integrative model. 

Any information in an organized body can be given over to the integrative model. You must know what the students should know about the information. Organized bodies do not necessarily show what the teacher wants the students to understand. The teacher must not give the information outrightly, but should lead the students to understand the information for themself and be able to answer questions about it. 

The younger the students, the less complex the matrix (the grid which holds the information) should be. Younger students will not respond as well to an overload of information. Older students will react far better. The information should first be gathered by the students to fill out the matrix. The students should be able to look at a graph or map and be able to gather data. The students should be able to read them, and if they are not they need to be taught what a key on a map is, or how to read graphs. Once the matrix has been made by the students, the rest of the lesson is ready. Gathering information is helpful for the students being more involved in the information. 

The students should take specific information and be able to generalize it. They should be able to take lots of information and generalize that information, finding the comparison and contrasts. There must be enough data for the students to understand what is going on. 

Technology is especially helpful here. Technology allows for both further resource and digitally creating a database for the information. Preparation time is greatly reduced when students are able to create the matrices for themselves on their computers. Large databases are often already compiled on all sorts of topics, so teachers are able to take those large databases and have their students search through them. The students should put the information in the cells of the matrix and then compare the information to synthesize rules. 

Asking open ended questions is key to student learning. Students will not be able to answer questions very well to begin. However, as the students become more familiar with answering questions, they will be able to answer with much more sophistications. Asking why a state does not have mountains is not a good question, because it does not have a real answer. However, asking why fishing would happen in a state near the ocean is a helpful question. 

The order of asking questions should move through the goals of the teaching. So, if the teacher is aiming to teach about how certain factors of geography and economy are linked, they must not skip important steps for linking them together. Older students should be held responsible for gathering their own information. They should be encouraged, especially in the beginning, to try even if they may fail, as they are not especially informed on how to gather the information. 

Background of students should be taken into account. Observations may be more difficult to make if different students see things differently and do not give the same manner of observations as the other students. Now, different observations are usually a good thing, but diverse students may be lost in the process and not understand what the previous knowledge should have been. As they continue to grow, they will do better and better. Similarly, those with less English skills may have a hard time understanding what is going on, so they should be accommodated. 

Teachers must be aware of opportunities to go further into the information when those opportunities appear. Teachers can use simple materials such as a document viewer, and project a paper on the screen, only guiding students through the discovery process. Guiding the students is an essential aspect to this learning process. The teachers may use only a little technology, though technology is a very helpful tool for this kind of learning. 

Repeating similar lessons will make the lessons easier and easier in the future. Teachers can reuse the information students discovered throughout the lesson in the next year. This is helpful for keeping preparation time lower and lower each year. The teacher can reuse information through making them into examples and using them as a helpful guideline for the next year. The teacher should not take the information and simply give it to the following year’s students, as this defeats the point of having the students discover the information for themselves. Teachers should continue to adapt the lessons to help their students attain to the teacher’s learning goals. 

The assessing process will be more difficult when using this method. This will make an objective understanding of how the students are doing difficult, as one is seeking to understand the qualitative critical thinking of the students, not the quantitative understanding of correct answers on a test. The students must be paid careful attention to in order to give correct grading and assess the student’s understanding. 

If the students are not able to retain the information, the teacher should not give up but should continue to seek to have students make the connections for themselves. The students will learn the more they make the connections. If the students are retaining the material, the teacher can know through testing. In the classroom the students come up with the information themself, and then the tests will gauge the methods the students were able to retain. The students will be tested on how they can gather, synthesize, and defend data. The content on the test should deal with examples not covered in class. This is because the students should be tested on critical thinking and application of the knowledge, not repetition of it. These questions can be stored for future use, allowing preparation time to be very low.