important principles that guide the work of a CONSTRUCTIVIST teacher

·         encourage and accept student autonomy and initiative.

Encourage students to be responsible on their learning.

Allow student responses to drive lessons, shift instructional strategies, and alter content.

Tailor their teaching strategies to student responses, create the learning experience that is open to new directions depending upon the needs of the student as the learning progresses

·         inquire about students' understandings of concepts before start activity

new knowledge must be built on previous knowledge and experience

guided students from basic to deeper levels of understanding through questions and encouragement  so that they can learn from the incorporation of their experiences

—  Provide learning environments such as real-world settings or case-based learning instead of predetermined sequences of instruction.

Learning must start with the issues around which students are actively trying to construct meaning. Example, in teaching volume and area, we must show the object. When teaching probability, we must let students explore where it will be used.

Avoid oversimplification and should represent the complexity of the real world.

Use raw data and primary sources along with manipulative, interactive, and physical materials. For example, when teaching statistics, can collect students information rather than use tables created from nowhere.

—  encourage students to engage in dialogue both with the teacher and with one another.

Example: Discussion, research project, field trip, group activity. Each member of class should be able to share their opinion with other.

Create a discourse of comfort wherein all ideas can be considered and understood and the students then feel safe about challenging other hypotheses, defending their own, and supporting real-world situations with abstract supporting data

—  encourage student inquiry by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions and encouraging students to ask questions of each other.

Instead of telling, the teacher must begin asking. Instead of answering questions that only align with their curriculum, teacher must make it so that the student comes to the conclusions on their own instead of being told. Teachers must challenge the student by making them effective critical thinkers and not being merely a "teacher" but also a mentor, a consultant, and a coach.

Open-ended questions and critical thinking encourage students to seek more than just a simple response or basic facts and incorporate the justification and defense of their organized thoughts. For example, question like ‘Define a triangle’ should be asked instead of ‘How many sides does a triangle has?’

Socratic learning is suggested as the best method of communication in this theoretical framework, as it allows the teacher to actively note any study skills the learner verbalizes, their progression, their frustrations, and form a rubric of their current learning state based on the dialogue. Any teacher lesson plans, teacher worksheets, or resources should in fact be constantly building the learner's knowledge in a spiral manner.

—  Support collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, not competition among learners for recognition.

Students should support each other in learning for the sake of knowing, not learning to get grades or recognition.

—  seek elaboration of students' initial responses.

The first is discovering and maintaining an individual's intellectual identity. This forces students to support their own theories, in essence taking responsibility for their words and respecting those of others

students are encouraged to think and explain their reasoning instead of memorizing and reciting facts.

—  engage students in experiences that might engender contradictions to their initial hypotheses and then encourage discussion.

Example, let students to explore whether median is  equal or not equal to mod or mean and the reason.

—  provide a waiting time after posing questions and for students to construct relationships and create metaphors.

Time is needed to process and reflect the question, also to analyze the requirement and choose the best response, if possible along with explanation.

—  nurture students' natural curiosity

Though curiosity may kill a cat, without it, one cannot learn well. Curiousity  create the spirit of learning. For example, let students why the shortest distance between two points on Earth surface is using Great Circle.

Young children and scientists have much in common.  Both are interested in a wide variety of objects and events in the world around them.  Both are interested in, and attempt to make sense of, how and why things behave as they do.  (Osborne & Freyberg 1985, p.1)

Some strategies for teacher include having students working together and aiding to answer one another's questions. Another strategy includes designating one student as the "expert" on a subject and having them teach the class. Finally, allowing students to work in groups or pairs and research controversial topics which they must then present to the class.

Working in groups, learners support each other’s understanding as they articulate their observations, ideas, questions and hypotheses. Working in groups help students learn social interaction skills they will need later in life. Students will learn to value each others input and opinions.