Misconceptions

Colby Wegter

Misconceptions

I thought this article was interesting because when you are asking questions or testing students on their understanding there are not always clarifying questions to help with following up. Perhaps students had and idea of what the answer was but if they weren’t asked to clarify they could have simply guessed wrong and vice versa. Maybe they guessed right and had no idea what they were answering. This is wrong. Students should have to back up their answers in almost any setting so a teacher can clarify whether they have gotten understanding or not.

I like the idea of keeping track of misconceptions by noting them in the textbook margins. You can never get rid of misconceptions by just choosing and up to date textbook. But if you find the misconceptions and write them into the margins you can give warning to future classes about theses misconceptions.

Labs were also a good idea. If you are closer to your students and explaining things yourself it will help you as a teacher to cut down on these misconceptions. If the words are coming out of your mouth then you might have a better chance of answering questions.

Finally, I thought it was very interesting that just because a student’s scientific vocabulary increases does not mean that they understand in full the words they are using. With the results from the test in the article that is clear. So there has to be a better way to teach terminology. While terminology has never been my strong suit I would be interested to see if there are more effective ways to teach this terminology to students. Perhaps more experiments and interactive activities would help with this.