Journal #5

Luis Moll’s Funds of Knowledge approach is influenced by the work of Lev

Vygotsky, who you studied in EDFD 401. What is Vygotsky’s central
argument(s) about learning according to your EDFD 401 resources? (Cite
said EDFD 401 resources in your answer)

Vygotsky’s main idea is the concept of social constructivism. He believes that

students learn socially by communicating and collaborating with each other. Also, he

advocates for mediated learning, because he believes that the instruction should meet all

students where they are in order to build them up from there (Constructivism

PowerPoint- Slide 11&12). Vygotsky’s methods of learning are very much focused on the

group aspect of learning. He looks at how sharing ideas and communicating effectively

allows students to make conjectures about what might be happening, share their ideas,

and then discuss why each of these is right or wrong. It gives them the opportunity to

discover their knowledge and promotes deeper understanding of underlying factors and

concepts that go into each situation that is being discussed. This also allows students to

start with their basic ideas and work together in order for each student to gain the

knowledge to fully understand the concept causing everyone to start at different spots but

still get to the same conclusion in the end.

B) Can you describe how your completed Funds of Knowledge Visual makes
use of concrete examples from your clinical placement
setting AND/OR sources 2 and 3 from your Resource List to shape a strategy
for both identifying and using learners’ Funds of Knowledge in your future
classrooms?

My clinical placement setting is in the 9th and 10th Grade AVID classrooms. Both

of these classrooms advocate for students to use their funds of knowledge in order to

complete their homework. This placement has allowed me to see the benefit of
collaboration in learning and how important it can be in the classroom environment.

Making questions that allow the students to use their background knowledge is

important to get them interested and relating to the content. While this is important, it

can be hard to create questions that represent every students’ experiences. Students

come from many different backgrounds and the best way to allow them to embrace their

background is by allowing students to work together and piece together all of their past

experiences in order to answer the questions. These ideas that I saw in place in AVID

helped me shape my own teaching strategy for the future. I want to include discussion

and collaboration in my classroom so students can discover the math concepts more at

their own pace. This also would allow students to be more interested in math because

they can relate it to their real life situations.