After reading, " Constructive Learning Environments on the Web:  Engaging Students in Meaningful Learning, " by David H. Jonassen, I now understand what is meant by the term "Constructive Learning" (CL).  I often confused it with its counter, "Objective Instruction" ("OI").  This article clearly said that "OI", "problems function as examples/applications of the concepts and principles previously taught.  Wherein "CL", the problem drives the learning.  Now that spelled out the difference in learning and cued me in as to the kind of environment one would be teaching in.

I could spend the time listing the elements, of which there are 6 referenced in the article, but one should read it for themselves to see what they relate to and need to know.  In short, there are 3 integrated components that need to  be included in the problem/issue/case/project for the learners to resolve/solve:  Problem Context, Problem Representation/Simulations, and Problem Manipulation Space. 

As a teacher currently in front of eager minds, eagerly awaiting to be engaged in a new lesson, I have to always pose a problem for them to think about before we get into the ways in which an idea, a word, or a situation needs to be answered/solved.  For instance, 4 year olds love to play and that is a fact.  When I am teaching them about early addition concepts like the Zero Family or even the Ones Family, we play a matching game with cards.  Here they are engaged in recognition and then they must covey their findings to another student on their team.  It begins with giggles, calling out, correcting answers and explaining why they are correct by representation, a drawing or pointing to the card with the correct number on it, picking it out from a bunch of cards, and sharing that solution aloud with the class.  My students love this, they get to play teacher.  I get to direct the problem as the facilitator.  Here they arr manipulating the environment. 

For me, I can now identify what I have been watching, constructive learning.  During our classes, we explore reading as a team, we look at new words and I put them on a Word Wall for all to see.  What the students do is visit the wall after class and play another game with each other.  They find the words that start with a certain letter and sound out the words as I did when I put them on the wall.  the cycle does not end there.  When other students come in for playtime, some of my students call those over to the wall and ask, "Do you know what this word is?"  The response is, "No."  Now, my student begins to demonstrate with pointing and sounding out what the words are as both students take turn in repeating the process.  Again, they were doing this, I was just watching.

This article definitely helped me to understand with modeling, coaching and scaffolding that I could create a CLE and not even know that I was doing it nor did the students know either.