Cognitive theorists believe “learning is a mental operation that takes place when information enters the brain through the senses, undergoes mental manipulation, is stored, and is finally used” ( Lever-Duffy & McDonald, 2003, p.16) and there are many resources in today’s educational system that support this thinking. This week I was re-introduced to several techniques that I have used in the classroom many times and find very valuable but over the years I have become lazy I suppose and never really thought about the theories behind the activities. Renewing my foundations to education has really been an eye opener for me and a journey that my students will benefit from.
Over the years I have found activities that have worked and have developed a style in my teaching and never really put the energy into referencing these activities and lessons to theories. My instructional methods are a “mod podge” of sorts that does not rely on just one theory or style but rather a fine blend of many. Depending on the specific concepts and/or curriculum and the group of students I am working with my techniques will vary.
Our text, Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski2007) lists a few different strategies that would be successful in the classroom while supporting the cognitivist’s point of view. “Cues, questions and advanced organizers” (Pitler et al., 2007) provides various samples of graphic, narrative and expository organizers, and numerous types of questions and questioning styles to provide the students with the opportunities to link learning to prior experiences and knowledge. This ability to connect with prior knowledge allows the student to transform this short term memory information into long term memory (Novak & Canas, 2008) and provides the learner with not just a written form of the information but also a visual form of the information therefore providing for multiple intelligences. Developing solid note taking skills is also essential for the students and again would concur that connecting the important facts with prior knowledge in a meaningful way to the learner is vital for those following a cognitive theory.
Concept Mapping is being labeled the “New Model of Education” (Novak & Canas, 2008) and requires that teachers be adequately trained on this type of instructing or guiding because it all starts with an essential question. Novak states that the “first step to learning is to ask the right question” (2008, p.12) and this would coincide with what the cognitivists believe. Ask a question based on your prior knowledge and you can link this new experience to an “old” experience and then find an easier more permanent connection to your long term memory. The questions need to be relevant and meaningful (Novak, & Canas, 2008) to the students to help retain the information and develop that connection even further. Cognitivists would expect that learners be exposed to physical experiences that would involve many of their senses. Touch, smell and sight are very important to the cognitivist theory. Hands on or actual real life experiences would be the best but when physically impossible technology makes it possible to bring these opportunities to the classroom rather inexpensively and quite conveniently. When discussing events in history or mathematical concepts that relate to the real world what better experience then to bring the children there. Our video resource (Laureate Education, Inc., 2008) refers to a virtual tour of Ford’s Theater that Lincoln was killed in, and reveals students as they experienced the lesson differently once they had the tour as compared to the textbook picture. I use virtual tours to insight interest and excitement. When we started our banking unit I took my students on virtual tour of the US Mint. This 15 minute experience provided my students with the concrete image to connect the new knowledge to, therefore giving it a better opportunity to stay in their long term memory and become learned knowledge.
Reading this material rejuvenates me as I begin to reinvent or confirm my style and my philosophy and connect it with theorists that I have studied years ago. In the everyday world of teaching and mothering it is easy to throw these formal titles out of your mind but I am relieved to know that the strategies and techniques that support these theories are being actively practiced in my classroom on a daily basis.
Please share with me some interesting virtual tours that you have been on or hope to go on. I would love the ideas and I would love to hear about the experiences. I also would like to hear about any experiences anyone has had with concept mapping in mathematics. I struggle as I try to incorporate a concept mapping activity into my current course.
LORI POWERS
Link to US MINT TOUR: http://www.usmint.gov/mint_tours/index.cfm?flash=yes
National Zoo's webcams: Virtual field trips to see the animals.
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/WebCams/default.cfm
Yellowstone National Park Webcams: Old Faithful:
http://www.nps.gov/yell/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm
Resources: ( I apologize as I can not get the formatting on this blog to post my resources in correct APA format.)
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008). Program six. Spotlight on Technology: Virtual Field Trips [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore: Author.
Lever-Duffy,J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations (Laureate Education, Inc., custom ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Novak, J. D. & Cañas, A. J. (2008). The theory underlying concept maps and
how to construct and use them, Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006- 01 Rev 01-2008. Retrieved from the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition Web site: http://cmap.ihmc.us/Publications/ResearchPapers/TheoryUnderlyingConc eptMaps.pdf
Orey, M.(Ed.). (2001). Emerging perspectives on learning, teaching, and technology. Retrieved from http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Main_Page
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Practice Makes Perfect !?!
Our school had curriculum night last night. I met many of the parents and shared my beliefs and theories in education and my expectations of their children for the year. HOMEWORK was a huge part of that discussion. As you know I teach math to sixth graders and nightly homework is a requirement in my courses. Although I share answers the next day and have active discussions regarding the homework I do not individually check homework for my students, I require they put in their effort to correct and understand their homework.
As I discussed this with the parents last night I could not help but think of these theories and strategies that we are studying and how I can just fit right into parts of all of these beliefs. I want to share with you my comments and ask you, am I actually seeing myself in all of these theories just as I can identify with all of the symptoms of any disease I read about on line. Am I a “theoretical hypochondriac” or do I truly follow the theories of many of these theorists and possibly fall rather heavy on the behaviorists side?
Homework is for practice and preparation. My students practice the skills introduced that day and then read and outline the next section to prepare for the following day’s lesson. I ask that parents stop children when the child hits 40 minutes or any tears and report this to me. I anticipate the practice exercises to average 20 minutes a night and 5-10 minutes reading and outlining. If the children require more time than that I do not want them going on because chances are they are not understanding and I do not want them practicing the wrong way. My students know this and understand their goal is to practice, and because the text I am reading states, “homework should be identified and articulated”(Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn & Malenoski, 2007, p.187), I discuss this often with the children.
My policy states that students bring homework in and check their answers with those on board, anything wrong is first discussed with classmates and then brought up to teacher in a whole group setting if the problem can not be resolved. This procedure clearly shows the students that they are responsible for their homework. Ultimately they will see that their effort during homework time should directly correlate to their success in my class. Although the idea of keeping a spreadsheet recording effort to success, which is also listed in our text (Pitler et al., 2007), is a wonderful visual to provide the children providing the immediate feedback they need to believe the theory. Mastering any skill requires practice and that is what homework provides in mathematics… practice, practice, practice! After the initial skill is mastered then it can be presented in applications and bring the information into the brain through networks and strengthen any necessary connections so the concept can become a memory (Laureate Education Inc., 2008)
Behaviorists believe in the idea that practice makes perfect! Memory can be built, behaviors can be improved and the world can be a better place if we all included a little bit of the behaviorist theory of practice makes perfect and reinforcement and punishment can produce amazing results. Now there is always a skeptic that will yell out an exception but I dare you to sit back and truly think how you learned and are as successful as you are. If you hung out with my Dad you would have no option but to listen, if he did something wrong he was beat, if he did n't do his homework he was beat, if he didn’t eat all his dinner he was beat … eventually he learned to do all those things without a battle and has become a success today! Mind you, he also had to walk up hill, both ways in the snow with holes in his shoe. Isn’t that how it goes? Seriously, reward and punishment works, the affects do not have to be that extreme and in all honesty I am sure my father was not beat for everything but that is what he remembers, punishment for not doing something right. Behaviorist techniques of reward and punishment have been used for centuries before it was even named actually, so it can not be that bad!
Therefore I feel a sense of peace as I assign my homework and require my students follow through on their activities or suffer the consequences of bad grades or home time restrictions. All I am doing is what generations before me have been doing, the only difference for my students is today I incorporate some technology with their assignments. Their stories of struggle will be telling of how they had to wait for the dial up connection to load their online textbook to be able to do their homework or how a virus wiped out their whole paper just as they were about to save it.
The resources we are using are changing but the ideas behind education does not have to totally change with it! Use the technology to make skill and drill and the record keeping of these skills more efficient. Find ways to incorporate these stimuli and response programs into your classroom to help with the basic concepts that do have to be memorized. The children will find them interesting, challenging and rewarding and will be pleading to “play it again” and I promise that is not the response when you hand out a worksheet or try to do flashcards.
Here are a few of my students’ favorite behaviorist style websites for mathematics:
Place value : http://www.mrnussbaum.com/placevaluepirates1.htm
Coordinate graphing: http://www.mathplayground.com/Locate_Aliens.html
Fraction addition: http://fen.com/studentactivities/MathSplat/mathsplat.htm
RESOURCES:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008b). Program two. Brain Research and Learning [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore: Author.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
As I discussed this with the parents last night I could not help but think of these theories and strategies that we are studying and how I can just fit right into parts of all of these beliefs. I want to share with you my comments and ask you, am I actually seeing myself in all of these theories just as I can identify with all of the symptoms of any disease I read about on line. Am I a “theoretical hypochondriac” or do I truly follow the theories of many of these theorists and possibly fall rather heavy on the behaviorists side?
Homework is for practice and preparation. My students practice the skills introduced that day and then read and outline the next section to prepare for the following day’s lesson. I ask that parents stop children when the child hits 40 minutes or any tears and report this to me. I anticipate the practice exercises to average 20 minutes a night and 5-10 minutes reading and outlining. If the children require more time than that I do not want them going on because chances are they are not understanding and I do not want them practicing the wrong way. My students know this and understand their goal is to practice, and because the text I am reading states, “homework should be identified and articulated”(Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn & Malenoski, 2007, p.187), I discuss this often with the children.
My policy states that students bring homework in and check their answers with those on board, anything wrong is first discussed with classmates and then brought up to teacher in a whole group setting if the problem can not be resolved. This procedure clearly shows the students that they are responsible for their homework. Ultimately they will see that their effort during homework time should directly correlate to their success in my class. Although the idea of keeping a spreadsheet recording effort to success, which is also listed in our text (Pitler et al., 2007), is a wonderful visual to provide the children providing the immediate feedback they need to believe the theory. Mastering any skill requires practice and that is what homework provides in mathematics… practice, practice, practice! After the initial skill is mastered then it can be presented in applications and bring the information into the brain through networks and strengthen any necessary connections so the concept can become a memory (Laureate Education Inc., 2008)
Behaviorists believe in the idea that practice makes perfect! Memory can be built, behaviors can be improved and the world can be a better place if we all included a little bit of the behaviorist theory of practice makes perfect and reinforcement and punishment can produce amazing results. Now there is always a skeptic that will yell out an exception but I dare you to sit back and truly think how you learned and are as successful as you are. If you hung out with my Dad you would have no option but to listen, if he did something wrong he was beat, if he did n't do his homework he was beat, if he didn’t eat all his dinner he was beat … eventually he learned to do all those things without a battle and has become a success today! Mind you, he also had to walk up hill, both ways in the snow with holes in his shoe. Isn’t that how it goes? Seriously, reward and punishment works, the affects do not have to be that extreme and in all honesty I am sure my father was not beat for everything but that is what he remembers, punishment for not doing something right. Behaviorist techniques of reward and punishment have been used for centuries before it was even named actually, so it can not be that bad!
Therefore I feel a sense of peace as I assign my homework and require my students follow through on their activities or suffer the consequences of bad grades or home time restrictions. All I am doing is what generations before me have been doing, the only difference for my students is today I incorporate some technology with their assignments. Their stories of struggle will be telling of how they had to wait for the dial up connection to load their online textbook to be able to do their homework or how a virus wiped out their whole paper just as they were about to save it.
The resources we are using are changing but the ideas behind education does not have to totally change with it! Use the technology to make skill and drill and the record keeping of these skills more efficient. Find ways to incorporate these stimuli and response programs into your classroom to help with the basic concepts that do have to be memorized. The children will find them interesting, challenging and rewarding and will be pleading to “play it again” and I promise that is not the response when you hand out a worksheet or try to do flashcards.
Here are a few of my students’ favorite behaviorist style websites for mathematics:
Place value : http://www.mrnussbaum.com/placevaluepirates1.htm
Coordinate graphing: http://www.mathplayground.com/Locate_Aliens.html
Fraction addition: http://fen.com/studentactivities/MathSplat/mathsplat.htm
RESOURCES:
Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2008b). Program two. Brain Research and Learning [Motion picture]. Bridging learning theory, instruction and technology. Baltimore: Author.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
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