Cognitivism in Practice

CUES, QUESTIONS AND ADVANCE ORGANIZERS...HOW THIS RELATES TO COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY??

When it come to cues, questions and advanced organizers the focus is on getting information and organizing it about a certain topic. Organizing information and presenting it to a student prior to an assignment can make them understand the topic and focus the learning. Organizing the information helps makes sense of what is important. Technology plays a huge role in helping to organize information in many different ways for students. One concept that I use often in my class is Brain pop. (www.brainpop.com) This tool has become very popular in my classroom. It introduces new lessons in quick video clips with vocabulary activities that correspond. Another tool that is used on a regular basis in my class is United Streaming. (www.unitedstreaming.com)
I use this tool very often. It has great video's to help reinforce lessons. I do not have a Social Studies book so I find a lot of resources on United Streaming. This relates to cognitive learning because we live in a world where television viewing has become the norm. When my students see short video clips they can take a small break, relax and view something that is educational.

SUMMARIZING AND NOTE TAKING....HOW THIS RELATES TO COGNITIVE LEARNING THEORY?

When I think of summarizing or note taking I think of the struggles I had beginning to understand what was important about taking notes that are summarized. Once I began to see the benefit I used to color code all my notes in college with fine point markers and was hyper about making sure they were perfect because it made studying struggle free. Like it is stated that summarizing and note taking are ways to synthesize information and put it into a new format. My students have a hard time at 4th grade understanding how to summarize and note take. They are concerned with missing something if they have to take notes. I try to help them as best as I can but get frustrated because at this age everything is so important. I have used writing graphic organizers in Inspiration. This helps students to organize all of there information. The students loved using technology in a new way and did not even realize it was helping them to keep the information short and sweet. I just had an experience with wiki's for a previous class in my masters and really hope to incorporate this as my students become more tech savvy. I have just started to incorporate blogs and my students continue to struggle and ask lots of questions. Summarizing and Note Taking relates to cognitive learning practice because it is short simple steps to make learning easier and less frustrating for students. They need to make the small steps in learning to understand what the big picture will contain.

BEHAVIORISM IN PRACTICE, REINFORCING EFFORT & HOMEWORK & PRACTICE

BEHAVIORISM IN PRACTICE...

Behaviorism reminds me of make good choices and follow the rules. When students come into my classroom I have high expectations and those are communicated from day 1. I feel that students will adapt to the environment they are in and will begin to see the benefits they can have from having appropriate behavior. Behaviorism is such a huge part of my classroom practice because you either receive positive reinforcement for following directions and behaving the expected way or else there are punishments, which is the last thing a student wants and doesn't often happen in my classroom (this year).

REINFORCING EFFORT...

Reinforcing Effort was a good reminder that students need to always have some sort of reinforcement when it comes to any area of there life. When you apply effort to behaviorism is implies that students need to take information in small bits to fully understand it. Students may not relate effort to achievement and when you show them positive reinforcement for there effort they will begin to see that the hard efforts pay off. Students want to know that they are doing good and giving a good effort. As a 4th grade teacher I feel that my students are young enough to want to always give good effort. As a teacher I am always giving them positive rewards for great efforts. In an ideal situation students would strive to give 110% effort to understand the benefits that come with an achievement. Grades are a good basis for effort. I try to use technology as much as I can in my class. For rubrics I use www.rubistar.com for grading projects and writing. I have never used survey monkey (www.surveymonkey.com) but I think this could definitely be something that I incorporate into my classroom technology after each semester to see what my students enjoyed and did not enjoy.

HOMEWORK AND PRACTICE...

Homework has become such a complicated issue. So many times I assign homework and worry what kind of nasty emails I will have the following morning. Most of the time students who struggle have not been following directions, not paying attention, and yet it is the teachers fault. I would love to give technology homework however I have a handful of students in my class who have high speed Internet and only half of the class has working computers at home. I think homework is a great way to reinforce a lesson however it has to be simple enough so the student does not become frustrated easily. I have used google docs http://docs.google.com/ to help set up a 10 year class reunion but I really enjoyed using this tool. It is so difficult and impossible to assign any technology homework. For my social studies lesson we do State PowerPoint projects and we have to spend weeks of class time working on them because students do not have the technology resources at home that they need. I think that behaviorism relates to homework because it is a positive way to reinforce a lesson. Students then can do there homework and feel accomplished when they complete it.

One class closer...

Well I seem to be using a blog again for my new class!! This blog will be used for my class Bridging Learning Theory, Instruction and Technology!! Hope you enjoy. I want to get more information on this blog and gear it towards my class! Hopes are high. Happy New Year!!