On the 8th of May at 3pm, a Knowledge Building Community Network Learning (KBCNL) session was held and 21 teachers and researchers from pre-school, primary, and secondary teachers and researchers attended. As a result of the COVID-19 situation, this session was held online due to the COVID-19 situation that arose in Singapore, where a ‘circuit breaker’ was introduced to reduce the spread of the infection and contain the situation. Teachers and students were thus forced to learn from their homes for a sustained period of time.
The aim of the session was to discuss the teachers’ progress in using Knowledge Building (KB) in their Home-Based Learning (HBL) teaching practice and to also update teachers on the emerging analysis from data collected from the KB Design Studio held in November 2019. As the shift from a traditional classroom to HBL was carried out to ensure that students can continue to receive formal education even from home, Knowledge Building was viewed to be a feasible and approachable practice for experienced and beginning teachers to further engage students from their homes and allow students’ ideas to flourish in idea-centric work.
The meeting first started with a reflection by Melvin, a History teacher.
Reflection by Melvin
Melvin reflected on the importance of KB by first posing a question to the teachers in the meeting: “What is the difference between knowledge building and building knowledge?” Alongside responses from other teachers, Chew Lee subsequently built on Melvin’s ideas by sharing her understanding of learning and thinking in relation to KB. She explained that there are learning routines that require little thinking; not all activities, when it involves learning, involves thinking. Therefore, teachers could reflect on the type of learning that students should be engaged in, how to continue to manage students so they remain motivated in the learning process, and how to continue to engage students in pursuing the topic without the active presence of the teacher.
Knowledge Building on the topic of Photosynthesis
Lalitha, a biology teacher, then shared her progress in integrating KB practices in HBL to engage her students in a discussion on photosynthesis. She had shared in the previous NL session that most students showed little interest in photosynthesis and therefore she decided to hinge the topic on the idea of vertical farming. She encouraged her students to further their understanding of vertical farming in Singapore and even brought in an expert for the students to interview and gain a deeper understanding of the topic. The students developed questions based on their ideas and posed the questions on the Knowledge Forum (KF), an online platform for sharing students’ ideas, so that the expert could respond.
The students’ questions were observed not limited to photosynthesis but also related to themes such as minerals, global warming, and the effect of acid rain on plant growth, showing that the students were investigating and gaining knowledge outside of the school syllabus. Lalitha felt that students were linking and extending knowledge beyond the textbook and have established a thinking routine to not solely base learning to always be from the textbook, leading her to feel very heartened, especially when several students mentioned how they might build a vertical farm later in life.
Lalitha sharing with teachers how she has integrated the KB pedagogy in her HBL on the topic of photosynthesis
Knowledge Building on the topic of Adaptation
Chew Lee next shared how a primary school teacher challenged her students to formulate theories on adaptation, based on the KF discussions.
The different views on the KF promoted and deepened students’ learning of the topic, one of which contained shared resources that students provided as a resource site, so that all students would be able to advance their knowledge together. From a separate view, students completed a classification task to reason the best way of classifying drawn organisms. In another view, students had to come up with a theory and apply it to an animal that they were interested in and explain how that animal was adapting to the environment. Therefore, students could see whether their theory of adaptation is able to hold with real world evidence.
Chew Lee sharing with teachers how a teacher implemented KB into HBL on the topic of ‘Adaptation’
Knowledge Building as a Development Plan for Subject-Based Leaders
Melvin subsequently shared how his school’s representatives from across the level had embarked on a KB journey on the theme of ‘The Beauty of Diversity’ to link the different subjects together.
Melvin sharing with the teachers how KB was used in a Development Plan for Subject-based Leaders
The subject representatives were initially divided into several main groups, namely, Humanities, Applied Subjects, Languages and Science and Math. Students within these groups were able to work together and use the KF to share ideas, so as to understand the common shared benefits among subjects. The students eventually summarised their learning and realized there are different perspectives in looking at problems, different forms of expressions to represent them, and different ways in solving them. Students were able to play an active role in gathering information and discuss ideas to create a shared understanding of how diversity plays an important role across all subjects.
Melvin continued to share how he used KB in his History class during the HBL period, where students left mostly notes on KF using the “I need to understand” scaffold, indicating a strong affirmation that the students have already internalised the thinking routines and the thinking processes that KB can bring forth to the student discussions.
Knowledge Building in Social Studies
Andy next shared that am aim for students in St Hilda’s Primary school was to not just be learners, but change-makers in society so that they can make a positive impact in the world. He felt that this is a good opportunity to explore the KB principle of ‘real problems, authentic ideas’ with a lot of change-makers who are making a difference during this COVID-19 period from their homes.
The school had also created a hashtag #KeepSGgoing to honour frontline workers in Singapore and to make students think about how they can be involved in this. Students were encouraged to have a KB dialogue with their parents at home to craft something out to show their appreciation for frontline workers amidst the pandemic. This is because it is important for the kids to reflect on it and to take something from this experience.
Andy sharing how KB is implemented in Saint Hilda Primary School’s HBL sessions
Knowledge Building in Literature
Robiah, a Literature teacher from Unity Secondary school, shared how she used KB to facilitate discussions in her HBL classes. Previously, she had given the students the freedom to create scaffolds that they believe are useful for deepening their understanding of Literature. She had also observed that the students were able to work out which scaffolds were valuable to them.
Following this activity, she rented the adapted play of the book that they were reading and made the students write down what came to mind to ‘(make) thinking visible’. She realised that there were ‘a lot of things that students notice’ and ‘a lot of things that (she) did not pick up’. Furthermore, the students were using the scaffolds that they had previously discussed to post questions to their friends. Many of the students also wanted to re-watch the lesson again because they had enjoyed the activity.
Overall, she felt that KB has allowed students to revisit the learning and had also decided to use the same scaffolds developed in the Literature class to her English class. Thus, KB allows teachers to learn together with their students and allowing students to take the lead, with the teacher acting as facilitators, to deepen their knowledge.
Robiah’s sharing of how she implemented KB into her HBL lessons in literature
Knowledge Building in Early Childhood Schools
Chew Lee next invited Yan Ling, a teacher from Red School House Primary school, to share with the teachers how they had implemented KB in their HBL practice. Yan Ling talked about the challenges she had faced in the first cycle of KB and how for younger children, they would require ‘the help of adults’ to make associations between concepts. Thus, it was decided to include parents in the new KB cycle so that KB discourse was no longer focused in the classroom setting.
Another teacher, Vaishnavi, a K2 teacher, further elaborated on how they are encouraging parents to play an active role in their children’s learning by ‘(sending) out activities for children to do at home’ which includes activities like ‘proper handwashing techniques and creating of their own mask’ after she had covered the topic of ‘virus and bacteria’ on the theme of ‘Our Amazing Body System’.
Vaishnavi’s sharing of how she had implemented the KB pedagogy into her HBL lessons on the topic of ‘Our Amazing Body System’
Concluding Statements
Melvin wrapped up the session by sharing how KB not only challenges the students but also the teachers by constantly making them reflect on how what they have done can be brought back to the subject at hand. His students shared a quote, that “ideas are meant to spark, shape and soar’ and that the idea of soaring was not about synthesising but rather the ability to sell your ideas to make people love your ideas or to make others want to learn more about the ideas. Therefore, the process of KB has indeed allowed students and teachers alike to deepen and evolve their ideas.