lessons from the butter churn

When I was in the third grade, my class did a social studies lesson on the early days of North American settlement.  My teacher taught usi how to make butter just like the early settlers did.  Then while we individually read and answered questions from the textbook (AHHHHH!), we got to butter some bread to snack on.  I'm not sure what happened to our group's butter (the teacher still let us eat it so I'm sure it wasn't something too risky), but it was chunky and clumpy and just rolled off the bread in little balls.  Needless to say, I was quite amused by this buttery phenomena.  Instead of answering the questions from the book, I spent my time lost in my own little world in an endless cycle of trying to take a bite of bread, butter balls falling off into my lap, picking them up again, and giggling quietly to myself before trying to, once again, take a bite of buttered bread.  The fun stopped when the boy sitting across from me shoved his book at me, stood up, and yelled, "Shut up, Ana!  Stop laughing at me!"  And just like that, social studies was over.  The two of us were removed from the room and relentlessly interrogated for our side of the story.

My side of the story allowed me to escape unscathed, but the point of this story is that this was not a social studies lesson gone horribly wrong, albeit said altercation.  Instead my teacher artfully balanced different techniques for the students to acquire knowledge.

There are three ways knowledge is acquired:

• Knowledge Received--this is when knowledge is transmitted from one person to the next through some medium (lecture, text, etc.)
• Knowledge Discovered--instead of being told by someone like in "knowledge received,"  you find out the information yourself
• Knowledge Constructed--projects, plays, building, and drawings

My teacher used all three methods of transmitting knowledge.  We received knowledge while reading through our text book.  We discovered knowledge by going though the butter-making process.  We constructed knowledge as we worked together as a group.

I'm also pretty sure this is the point in my life where I constructed the knowledge that giggling at something only you are aware of will not gain pretty results.

Anyways, as we continue our studies of the social studies curriculum and methods of teaching, I'll be sure to keep these ideas in mind.  And thanks to you my old hot-tempered classmate.  My experience with you 1. helped me remember the lesson on making butter and 2. gave me a concrete example to build new-found knowledge on.  Knowledge was received from reading my textbook.  Knowledge was discovered through thinking and reflecting.  Nice job, hot-tempered kid.