Chapter 3 Reflection

1.Chapter 3 focusses on attention and consciousness. Attention is divided into divided attention, selective attention(Dichotic listening, and Stroop effect), and Saccadic eye movements. There has been a big focus lately on research about consciousness.
2.This information fits in with previous chapters for example, change blindness and inattentional blindness were explained in chapter 2 and linked to selective attention in the 3rd chapter.
3.I think that I am clear on everything so far.
4-8. I though that the saccadic eye movements was interesting. I was thinking about my special ed students in my lower level class. When we do math word problems they seem to be discouraged at first. This theory explains that it takes much longer for a low level reader to read the problem as shown in the diagram in the book. This theory related to theme 1 in the book has helped me to understand some of the difficulties that my students bring to algebra class.
Divided attention was another topic in this chapter. The book mentions that when you are having to pay attention to two or more concepts we will miss some of the information more often than focusing on 1 concept. As I teach a new topic in Algebra I think that it helps my lower level class if I type out the notes for them. That way the students do not have to be distracted by writing the problem and can focus more attention on the explanation of the problem. I am also able to see their faces to determine whether they are "getting it".

Chapter 2 Reflection

1. Chapter 2 focused on visual, face, and auditory perception. The chapter discussed the differences between top-down processing and bottom-up processing.
2. Chapter 2 is related to what we learned in Chapter 1 but it has gone into more depth about the perception processes that were briefly described in Chapter 1.
3. The only thing that I am not clear on is the large amount of theories and terms in the chapter. It is hard to keep track of all of the theories. I think that it helps to apply it to my own teaching.
4 and 7. Apply to my own teaching? In the visual perception I was interested in the change blindness. I have my students in Algebra look at problems that are incorrect after they have learned a concept to see what errors the student has made. I choose mistakes in problems that are commonly made by students. This helps the students to read the steps of each problem and it is sometimes hard for them to find the mistakes because they are very minor. I think that this would be an example of change blindness as described in the book. After doing this activity, I think my students understand the steps of the problems more in-depth and avoid making some of the same mistakes.
5 and 6. The book gives several examples of the theories and terms which gives proof to these theories. For example, in change blindness the book gave the example where the stranger changed. There is also 2 pictures in the book to show that it is sometimes hard to see the difference unless you are extremely observant. I think that people are not always this observant because there is usually several things going on at the same time that people have to distribute their attention between.
8. Faster ways to achieve this? As for my correction activity it only takes about 15 - 20 minutes of class time for students to locate the mistakes and explain the mathematical problem. I think that this is more beneficial than just telling the students where common mistakes are made.