Teaching for Understanding

When learning about the instructional strategies that were mentioned in the resources of this week, I learned about meaningful experiences that I could offer for my students.  Dr. Michael Orey states that “We can create a rich experience, and this rich experience can be the foundational experience in this network of ideas that a child can have when they’re learning a content domain” (Laureate Education Inc., 2011b).  In creating these rich experiences, teachers can give the students a basis for connecting new content knowledge.  Since “there is a limit to how much information a learner can attend to at one time,” I feel that one of my responsibilities is to ensure that the learning tasks are meaningful (Laureate Education Inc., 2011a).  This will allow new information to stick with the students in their long term memory. 

Orey describes that there are three types of information in people’s long-term memories.  These types of information include declarative, procedural, and episodic memories (Laureate Education Inc., 2011a).  If I want the students to be able to declare knowledge, remember procedures, and connect content to experiences, I need to create powerful learning experiences.  These instructional strategies such as using cues, questions, and advanced organizers along with engaging learning tasks and going on virtual field trips can help me create opportunities that will allow deeper, more connected learning to take place. 

I will describe ways I plan to make learning meaningful by using cues, questions, and advanced organizers.  First, I plan to bring a teddy bear to the class to cue the students into the content of a new unit on bears.  We will have a discussion about where teddy bears come from and how they are made.  This activity will activate the students’ prior knowledge and interests, and will give them a clue that this particular lesson will have to do with stuffed bears.  Next, I will have the students, as a whole group, create a graphic organizer including what they know, want to know, and, later, what they learned about how bears are made.  The students will learn how teddy bears are made by going on a virtual field trip to a teddy bear factory, and they will add what they learned to the KWL chart.  Creating the KWL graphic organizer will help the students begin to understand the purpose of using advanced organizers.  Also, using the advanced organizers will allow me to implement questions at the beginning and throughout the lesson.  According to Pitler, Hubbell, and Kuhn (2012), “using cues, questions, and advanced organizers at the beginning of the lesson or unit focuses learning on the important content to come” (p. 91).  In prekindergarten, concepts need to be kept as simple as possible.  I will be using a KWL chart because it is simple for the students to follow.  I feel that this lesson would be engaging and purposeful while helping the students learn that ideas can be sorted into categories on charts.  In addition, learning how to organize ideas will help the students gain the understandings needed for future note-taking endeavors.

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011a). Program five: Cognitive learning theory [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Retrieved from http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecollege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011b). Program six: Spotlight on technology: Virtual field trips [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Retrieved from http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecollege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that works (2^nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Behaviorism

When I think about behaviorism in relation to classroom instruction, I think about teachers giving feedback to students.  Pitler, Hubbell, and Kuhn (2012) describe that “reinforcing effort enhances students’ understanding of the relationship between effort and achievement by addressing their attitudes and beliefs about learning” (p. 57).  The students need to know that their efforts are appreciated.  In the work place, people generally enjoy hearing that they are doing a good job and working hard throughout their work life.  This notion is the same for students as well.  Students will work harder and do their best work if they know that their work is purposeful and will be recognized by peers, teachers, or the community.  Why would we expect students to complete a tedious project that they know will be just thrown in the trash?  Student feedback is best served in a positive way.  With emerging instructional technology, there are multiple ways teachers can provide recognition for hard work throughout a process as well as recognition for a mastered goal.  Pitler, Hubbell, and Kuhn (2012) provide the example of using web showcases.  They explain that “[p]osting exceptional student work on the Internet opens up possibilities for recognition from friends, peers, professionals, and relatives across the globe” (p. 67).  This real world audience makes learning meaningful for the students, and using this audience teaches the students that their work is valued.

Behaviorism in the classroom could also be manifested as the students practice skills and behaviors that the teacher expects them to exhibit.  This often occurs through homework and skills repetition.  When I think of this type of behaviorism, I generally think of homework.  Homework was always a bad word for me.  It meant copying definitions, writing multiplication tables repeatedly, or writing spelling words “ten times each”.  This was absolutely not engaging for me.  I actually remember falling asleep while doing my homework.  Behaviorism is a way of encouraging desired behaviors or discouraging undesired behaviors.  Practicing skills taught me that school was boring and no fun.  Homework was not purposeful and was always graded and thrown in the trash.  It seemed to be a waste of time. 

With expanding educational technologies and the notion of creating engaging work for students, homework and practice is becoming more exciting for students.  One way students can become engaged in the practice of skills is by using online games and programs that are more fun than copying facts.  Students can also create content area games using Microsoft PowerPoint.  Instead of writing spelling words “ten times each,” students can now create cartoons using the spelling words that can be posted to classroom comedy blogs.  Students need to use the spelling words correctly for the audience to understand their writing.  The students can begin to understand that writing correctly is important.  Instead of copying definitions from a dictionary, students use the dictionary to understand meanings of words and can use them in context of a meaningful multimedia presentation on a comedy blog. 

Multimedia can also be used as a way for teachers to create tutorials for students who are doing homework.  Students can go online to watch a teacher-created or student-created podcast that will remind students of the concepts needed to complete homework assignments.  Dr. Orey explains that this type of “programmed instruction…is ubiquitous in online learning and technology” (Laureate Education Inc., 2011).  In addition to these programmed podcasts, students can instant message classmates to further understand concepts needed to create meaningful products.  Students now have the capability to access “resources that help them communicate in real time to teachers, peers, or outside facilitators” (Pitler, Hubbell, & Kuhn, 2012, p. 178).  This global environment allows for more meaningful learning. 

References

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Program four: Behaviorist learning theory [Video webcast]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Retrieved from http://laureate.ecollege.com/ec/crs/default.learn?CourseID=5700267&CPURL=laureate.ecollege.com&Survey=1&47=2594577&ClientNodeID=984650&coursenav=0&bhcp=1

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E. R., & Kuhn, M. (2012). Using technology with classroom instruction that

works (2^nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Reflection of Learning

This course has helped me learn several technology skills such as how to create and maintain a blog, use an RSS feed to keep up with several blogs, and collaborate to create a wiki.  Also, this course has provided me resources to assist in my understanding of the 21^st century skills that the students need to have for their futures.  I have also learned about how to know my students’ prior knowledge regarding technology in order to know what they are familiar with that can be used for learning activities.  Richardson (2010) describes that many of our students today “are fearless in their use of technology” (p. 7).  Thus, we might as well use the technology available to allow them to learn the way many of them enjoy learning.

I have a more profound understanding of the teaching and learning process.  I have been learning so much about how the 21^st century is a place for collaboration, inquiry, and technology.  While discussing topics with fellow colleagues, I have learned strategies that will help me not only teach content to my students, but give them the skills they will need to be 21^st century workers and thinkers. 

Prior to reviewing the materials associated with this course and collaborating with colleagues in an online setting, I thought that 21^st century skills was only about technology.  While the capacity to use technology is a part of the skill set needed in the expanding workplace, students also need to be able to work with others to find solutions to real world problems.  The classroom teacher is transitioning from the center of the classroom to part of the classroom circle.  Teachers are now facilitators of learning as they provide guidance to students to allow the students to find and solve problems with their peers.

While I incorporate some 21^st century skills in my classroom by way of collaborative projects, I still have a classroom that is largely teacher centered.  I have two goals that I plan to achieve by the end of the next two school years that will help me create a more inquiry, student centered classroom.  Nussbaum-Beach (2008) mentions that “classrooms in the 21st century need to be collaborative spaces where student-centered knowledge development and risk taking are accepted as the norm and where an ecology of learning develops and thrives.”  I have the desire and will work on my two goals to create this thriving learning environment.

One goal I have is to create a question friendly environment.  I often find myself telling students simple, easy answers to questions that will make them happy in the short term.  I want to change my teaching style into an environment where students want to ask and find answers to their own questions.  As the students ask questions, I want to take the time to guide the students to their own answers or predictions then verify the answers through research.  A specific action I plan to implement is to have a question wall in my classroom that I will write questions on as the students ask them.  As we answer the questions, we will add them to the wall.  This way, we can see what the students are learning.  Then, I can document standards that meet the learning activities we had around the questions. 

Another goal I have is to use the questions from the students as a jump start into collaborative projects.  Students must be interested in their questions and concerns or they would not have asked them.  Thus, I want to encourage this questioning by turning their questions into projects.  A Partnership for 21st Century Skills report (n.d.) states: “As much as students need knowledge in core subjects, they also need to know how to keep learning continually throughout their lives” (p. 4).  This lifelong learning mentality begins early in the students’ lives.  I want the students to know what to do when they have a question about anything.  For example, when a student asks what dinosaurs eat, I could have a set of dinosaur picture books available for a group of students to “read” by looking at the pictures to figure out what dinosaurs ate.  Then, I would have the students present to the class what they learned from the pictures.  This project teaches several language arts skills as well as science, social studies, and collaboration skills. 

After reviewing the course checklist that I completed in week one of my current course, I realized that one of my answers has changed.  I am now providing more opportunities for students to create their own goals.  I have begun asking the students what they want to learn.  For students who want to read, I make sure during small group instruction that they get to engage in pretend reading behaviors.  This small group setting is designed for the students to pretend to read while engaging in book talk.  Then, I will begin to allow students to read repetitive or circular literature for the students to begin reading the words on the pages of the books.

References

Nussbaum-Beach, S. (2008). No limits. Technology & Learning, 28(7), 14–18. Retrieved

from http://www.techlearning.com/features/0039/no-limits/44886

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). A report and mile guide for 21st century skills.

Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/

Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd

ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.