Pedagogy

The pedagogy that supports our lesson is the Place Based Education. This pedagogy is the belief that it is beneficial for students’ education that we implement a community’s history and the students’ culture into the lessons (Deringer, 2017, p. 335). Although Fiesta San Antonio does not take place here in the Rio Grande Valley, the students can still use their prior knowledge to relate and connect to the history behind the festival. Since San Antonio is one of the closest major cities, it is likely that most student have visited it as well as the Alamo, so this means that they will have some prior on the battle of the Alamo and San Jacinto.

The lesson is centered around the constructivist theory in the classroom. The constructivist theory is the belief that students learn best through a combination of hands-on activities, social interaction, and critical thinking situations. According to Powell and Kalina, constructivism is based on the combined theories of Piaget’s cognitive development and Vygotsky’s theory of social development (Powell & Kalina, 2009, p. 241). The aspect of constructivism that is from Piaget’s theory focuses on “…the children's ability to construct cognitively or individually their new knowledge…” (Powell & Kalina, 2009, p. 244). The aspect of constructivism that is from Vygotsky centers around his belief in “…social interaction and that it was an integral part of learning” (Powell & Kalina, 2009, p. 245).

This lesson is based on constructivism because it uses aspects from both Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories. In the lesson, we use many discussions between the students and the teachers to help understand the new content being delivered. Using these discussions throughout the unit, students will obtain the necessary social interaction that Vygotsky believed was crucial for students’ learning. Throughout this lesson, students’ prior knowledge as well as their higher order thinking skill are engaged in order to activate their cognitive development.