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.