1) Chapter 9 discusses using technology in the classroom in effective ways to improve student achievement. This is related to what we have previously learned in that technology is a tool in education to help kids understand and retain the information in long-term memory. As the cognition book mentioned students lean in different ways. Technology brings in a hands-on tool to help kids succeed.
2) What am I not clear on? I had no idea how much technology software is out there for use in the classroom. I will do my research this summer to try to use more of this in my classroom. The students will be more involved and more interested in their learning.
3) It is important to introduce new technology in the classroom because we live in a technology age where students will need to know how to use it in the future as they join the workforce. I am going to look into podcasts for students that miss assignments. In the weekly discussion it was mentioned that kids could make these. This might be a good idea in Algebra after a test to get another type of assessment for each student. I think that students would enjoy it and it would be more interesting for other students to watch.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Week 14 Reflection
1) There were 4 learning environments discussed in "How People Learn" Chapter's 6 and 7. These were learner, knowledge, assessment, and community based. The learner based environment focuses on giving the student the responsibility to learn the information through predictions and using their previous knowledge. The knowledge based approach is similar to the learner based in that the learner is very active but the type of instruction is more structured. In the assessment approach the teacher receives feedback through either formative or summative types of assessments. The community based instruction makes the classroom feel more like a family in which students do not feel threatened in the classroom. This relates to what we have learned in the cognition text by applying all of the cognitive principles to classroom instruction in order to achieve higher student achievement.
2) I think that the reason why math is moving quicker in Japan is that we have so much info to cover that we have to skim the top of everything. We are not doing our students any good this way. We are doing this because of the guidelines set by the state tests. Why do we continue to do this? Wouldn't it benefit our students if we had more time to try the learner based instruction where they would learn the material in more depth?
3) In my math classroom, I think that I take on a community based approach. The students feel comfortable in class. They know that mistakes are okay because we learn from them. I don't really make my students raise their hands to answer or ask a question. They are welcome to ask a question at any time during the lesson. I receive constant feedback by asking questions constantly. This would be an example of formative assessment. I would love to have more time to give the students the chance to do more with learner based environments. This would help the students have a deeper level of mathematical understanding and they will retain the info over time in their long -term memory.
2) I think that the reason why math is moving quicker in Japan is that we have so much info to cover that we have to skim the top of everything. We are not doing our students any good this way. We are doing this because of the guidelines set by the state tests. Why do we continue to do this? Wouldn't it benefit our students if we had more time to try the learner based instruction where they would learn the material in more depth?
3) In my math classroom, I think that I take on a community based approach. The students feel comfortable in class. They know that mistakes are okay because we learn from them. I don't really make my students raise their hands to answer or ask a question. They are welcome to ask a question at any time during the lesson. I receive constant feedback by asking questions constantly. This would be an example of formative assessment. I would love to have more time to give the students the chance to do more with learner based environments. This would help the students have a deeper level of mathematical understanding and they will retain the info over time in their long -term memory.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Chapter 10 Reflection
1. Chapter 10 focuses on language production including speaking and writing. This relates to just about every other concept in the book because there are many processes that need to be used in order to communicate. Production of language through writing requires planning, sentence generation, and revision. We use our short term and long term memory to write and speak. Our central executive is very active in this process. It is interesting to step back and think about all of the cognitive activities that are done in seconds as we speak.
2. The book mentions that there is not much research on writing even though it is a very complicated process. I wonder why the research is focused on the processes before writing, like comprehension, etc. and we do not research the end product in our writings.
3. I will be careful not to make the speech errors in my classroom like the sound, morpheme, and word errors. It is important to establish common ground with your students to ensure that the students are able to comprehend what we are covering. I feel it is important in math to remember my thoughts when I first learn the information and relate to my students. Sometimes math teachers do not realize the complexities because they have been doing the concepts for years. It helps to tell the students common errors when learning the material so that they are aware of them as they practice. I also thought that the benefits of bilinguals were interesting. The critical period hypothesis states that it is easier for young children to learn a second language as opposed to an adult. Maybe this is partly because as an adult, we have our attention divided to several tasks compared to a child. I think that it is possible for an adult to master a new language and I think it would be a benefit if they visited a country that speaks the native language.
2. The book mentions that there is not much research on writing even though it is a very complicated process. I wonder why the research is focused on the processes before writing, like comprehension, etc. and we do not research the end product in our writings.
3. I will be careful not to make the speech errors in my classroom like the sound, morpheme, and word errors. It is important to establish common ground with your students to ensure that the students are able to comprehend what we are covering. I feel it is important in math to remember my thoughts when I first learn the information and relate to my students. Sometimes math teachers do not realize the complexities because they have been doing the concepts for years. It helps to tell the students common errors when learning the material so that they are aware of them as they practice. I also thought that the benefits of bilinguals were interesting. The critical period hypothesis states that it is easier for young children to learn a second language as opposed to an adult. Maybe this is partly because as an adult, we have our attention divided to several tasks compared to a child. I think that it is possible for an adult to master a new language and I think it would be a benefit if they visited a country that speaks the native language.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Chapter 9 Reflection
1) I think that language ties in with just about everything else that we have learned in this course. I thought that the info on negative language ties in with the Pollyanna principle from earlier chapters. In order to communicate and learn through our working and long-term memory we need to be able to understand language and reading to be successful learners. I though that the top-down and bottom-up processes were similar to the whole-word (top-down) versus phonics (bottom-up)approach to learning how to read.
2) I wonder why the ACT test has several negative questions when it is a timed test? The book makes a point that these questions/statements take longer to comprehend. Are there educators out there that just use the whole-word approach without going through the separate sounds and letters first? This seems like it would be a struggle for kindergarten students if both approaches were not used.
3) I will be more careful in how I phrase my questions to be sure that I am using positives, the active voice, not nesting, and watching my ambiguities. I do not think that it is bad for kids to be exposed to this either though. They should be exposed to these in order to be aware of them when they are writing and communicating. If we failed as teachers to expose them to these, the students probably would not be successful communicators later on in life. Of course, we cannot be consistently ambiguous and we should try our best to stray away from these because there is a decrease in comprehension. We all learn from our experiences and I think that I am a better teacher from seeing both effective and non-effective ways to communicate.
2) I wonder why the ACT test has several negative questions when it is a timed test? The book makes a point that these questions/statements take longer to comprehend. Are there educators out there that just use the whole-word approach without going through the separate sounds and letters first? This seems like it would be a struggle for kindergarten students if both approaches were not used.
3) I will be more careful in how I phrase my questions to be sure that I am using positives, the active voice, not nesting, and watching my ambiguities. I do not think that it is bad for kids to be exposed to this either though. They should be exposed to these in order to be aware of them when they are writing and communicating. If we failed as teachers to expose them to these, the students probably would not be successful communicators later on in life. Of course, we cannot be consistently ambiguous and we should try our best to stray away from these because there is a decrease in comprehension. We all learn from our experiences and I think that I am a better teacher from seeing both effective and non-effective ways to communicate.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Chapter 12 Reasoning/Decisions
1. Chapter 12 focuses on deductive reasoning and decision making which related to problem solving in Chapter 11. All three topics are related to thinking which is going beyond the information given to reach a goal, decision, or belief. It involves taking new info in(working memory), using our previous knowledge (long-term memory) and reasoning to make a decision.
2. I found it very hard to relate the decision-making strategies/heuristics to what I actually think of when I make a decision. It was hard to apply to my life. It seems to me that there should be plenty more strategies that people use to make a decision compared to the ones given in the book. I think that the book mentioned this also, but it seems like when a researcher is wanting people to make a decision in a particular way, like the engineer problem. Of course we think that the person is an engineer because we have been given other info that leads to that decision and I don’t believe that looking at the percentages of engineers and lawyers should be the only method of making this decision.
3. I could use this in my work by helping students realize that there might be limits to our decision-making processes. I need to remind students that the way a statement or question is worded may affect your decision. Students should look at both agreeing with a statement and disagreeing with a statement or finding reasons why something may be false. Overall, students need to form questions when they are making a decision or reasoning about something and be sure to think about all areas before making a final decision. I tell my students that they should even question their teachers when something does not seem to make sense.
2. I found it very hard to relate the decision-making strategies/heuristics to what I actually think of when I make a decision. It was hard to apply to my life. It seems to me that there should be plenty more strategies that people use to make a decision compared to the ones given in the book. I think that the book mentioned this also, but it seems like when a researcher is wanting people to make a decision in a particular way, like the engineer problem. Of course we think that the person is an engineer because we have been given other info that leads to that decision and I don’t believe that looking at the percentages of engineers and lawyers should be the only method of making this decision.
3. I could use this in my work by helping students realize that there might be limits to our decision-making processes. I need to remind students that the way a statement or question is worded may affect your decision. Students should look at both agreeing with a statement and disagreeing with a statement or finding reasons why something may be false. Overall, students need to form questions when they are making a decision or reasoning about something and be sure to think about all areas before making a final decision. I tell my students that they should even question their teachers when something does not seem to make sense.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Ch. 11 Reflection Problem Solving
1. Chapter 11 covers problem solving. It is broken into understanding the problem, problem solving strategies, factors that influence problem solving, and creativity. It relates to what we have learned previously in that when we are problem solving we have to take new info into our working memory and use our top-down processing and info in long-term memory to help us solve problems.
2. I was mostly clear on everything in this chapter because it really relates to what I teach, mathematics. Most of the examples that were given were related to math so I enjoyed the examples. I have talked about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in other education classes/workshops so I was familiar with those terms also.
3. How would I relate this to my teaching? It is an everyday occurrence to use problem solving in math. My students are always asking where we are going to use the math that they have to learn later on in life. Math teaches the problem solving skills that are needed to be successful in the future. There are several strategies that are used to problem solve. I feel that my students often use the Means-end Heuristic and the analogy approach the most in my math classroom more than the hill-climbing heuristic. The means-end approach breaks a problem into smaller problems in order to get to the end result. The analogy approach uses our previous knowledge to relate the new problem to problems that have been previously done. We use the methods that we used in the previous problems in order to solve the new problem.
I find that some students are able to problem solve better than others. In our discussions this week someone mentioned that it maybe the difference between right brained and left brained people. A person that is right-brained maybe looking at the big picture and will be able to relate a new problem to an old problem even if it is a problem that is worded differently. A left- brained person has a harder time seeing the big picture. I think that this makes sense but it is not entirely true because I am very left-brained but seem to have no problem looking at the big picture when solving math problems.
2. I was mostly clear on everything in this chapter because it really relates to what I teach, mathematics. Most of the examples that were given were related to math so I enjoyed the examples. I have talked about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in other education classes/workshops so I was familiar with those terms also.
3. How would I relate this to my teaching? It is an everyday occurrence to use problem solving in math. My students are always asking where we are going to use the math that they have to learn later on in life. Math teaches the problem solving skills that are needed to be successful in the future. There are several strategies that are used to problem solve. I feel that my students often use the Means-end Heuristic and the analogy approach the most in my math classroom more than the hill-climbing heuristic. The means-end approach breaks a problem into smaller problems in order to get to the end result. The analogy approach uses our previous knowledge to relate the new problem to problems that have been previously done. We use the methods that we used in the previous problems in order to solve the new problem.
I find that some students are able to problem solve better than others. In our discussions this week someone mentioned that it maybe the difference between right brained and left brained people. A person that is right-brained maybe looking at the big picture and will be able to relate a new problem to an old problem even if it is a problem that is worded differently. A left- brained person has a harder time seeing the big picture. I think that this makes sense but it is not entirely true because I am very left-brained but seem to have no problem looking at the big picture when solving math problems.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Chapter 8 Reflection
1. Chapter 8 discusses general knowledge and semantic memory. There were 4 approaches to classifying new information from what we already know. The feature comparison model compares the new stimulus to a list of features and characteristics. The prototype approach compares the new stimulus to a specific prototype in long-term memory. The exemplar approach compares new stimulus to prior established examples. The network approach links the new stimulus to a variety of previous knowledge through a net system. The chapter also talks about schemas and scripts, which are already known general knowledge that can sometimes aid us or cause problems with learning new information.
2. I thought it ties in with everything else that we have learned but it shows how we can take our general knowledge and apply it in order to take in new info. I also thought that it tied into chapter 2 and the approaches such as the feature analysis theory and the recognition components theory in regards to the 4 approaches of the semantic memory.
3. I felt that there were a lot of details in this chapter. I had to continuously stop and re-read to understand it. The questions that were raised by the leaders really helped to organize the new information into a hierarchy type of system for me.
4. The prototype example is used a great deal in upper level math when we are graphing and translating graphs. Schemas helped me to realize that students have difficulty understanding because of what already exists in their long-term memory.
5. The author has provided proof as related to research in this chapter but I think that it would have been more helpful to provide more or better examples to explain the approaches and schemas/scripts. I felt that the author did a better job in previous chapters to explain using examples and to engage the learning process.
6. It is important to understand how we code and compare new stimulus to our pre-existing knowledge. This can help teachers to understand how our cognitive processes work in order to possibly organize new material into these types of approaches to help students better understand the material.
7. I use the prototype approach just about everyday in my Calculus class. When we look at an equation and picture a graph the parent graph is the prototype and all transformations of it form the graph. For example an absolute value equation forms a v-shaped graph. The parent graph of y = the absolute value of x would be the prototype because it is v-shaped and is centered at the origin. Other absolute value equations are all v-shaped graphs but differ in some way like a wider or narrower v-shape, moving up, down, left, right, or even flipped upside down. All transformations show characteristics of the prototype in that they all have a vertex and the sides have opposite slopes of one-another so we can classify these graphs in the absolute value category.
8. As I mentioned earlier, I found this chapter difficult to understand so I think more examples would have helped. I was also working on my workshop at the same time so I might have been a little distracted or involved in a divided attention task. I also think that depending on what new information that we are learning we use each of the 4 different approaches instead of just 1 specific approach.
2. I thought it ties in with everything else that we have learned but it shows how we can take our general knowledge and apply it in order to take in new info. I also thought that it tied into chapter 2 and the approaches such as the feature analysis theory and the recognition components theory in regards to the 4 approaches of the semantic memory.
3. I felt that there were a lot of details in this chapter. I had to continuously stop and re-read to understand it. The questions that were raised by the leaders really helped to organize the new information into a hierarchy type of system for me.
4. The prototype example is used a great deal in upper level math when we are graphing and translating graphs. Schemas helped me to realize that students have difficulty understanding because of what already exists in their long-term memory.
5. The author has provided proof as related to research in this chapter but I think that it would have been more helpful to provide more or better examples to explain the approaches and schemas/scripts. I felt that the author did a better job in previous chapters to explain using examples and to engage the learning process.
6. It is important to understand how we code and compare new stimulus to our pre-existing knowledge. This can help teachers to understand how our cognitive processes work in order to possibly organize new material into these types of approaches to help students better understand the material.
7. I use the prototype approach just about everyday in my Calculus class. When we look at an equation and picture a graph the parent graph is the prototype and all transformations of it form the graph. For example an absolute value equation forms a v-shaped graph. The parent graph of y = the absolute value of x would be the prototype because it is v-shaped and is centered at the origin. Other absolute value equations are all v-shaped graphs but differ in some way like a wider or narrower v-shape, moving up, down, left, right, or even flipped upside down. All transformations show characteristics of the prototype in that they all have a vertex and the sides have opposite slopes of one-another so we can classify these graphs in the absolute value category.
8. As I mentioned earlier, I found this chapter difficult to understand so I think more examples would have helped. I was also working on my workshop at the same time so I might have been a little distracted or involved in a divided attention task. I also think that depending on what new information that we are learning we use each of the 4 different approaches instead of just 1 specific approach.
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