How to Learn-Chapters 9-10

How to Learn-Chapters 9-10
1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?

Chapter 9 demonstrated how technology supports learning (cognition) with Chapter 10 being a review of previous information read in How to Learn. Information from both chapters is supported by our Cognition text- Technology to support learning by use of background knowledge/schema to evaluate a situation, integrate information from visuospatial sketchpad, phonological loop, episodic buffer and recall information from long term memory, use problem solving strategies etc.


2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
No doubt that technology has a positive impact on learning. How do you hook up with a scientist interested in being a partner with a student or class? Perhaps that is part of the Jasper Woodbury program and this is automatically provided. How do you hook up to the programs mentioned such as Jasper or GLOBE etc. Cost of software? Grants? How about teacher training?


3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
I see the importance in technology. I need to figure out ways to include this tool in my teaching. I guess I need to take “baby steps”…work on a few projects that include technology, perhaps take a class to help with my fears of including more technology.
The goal of teaching is that my students will apply and transfer knowledge to other situations. Keeping that in mind I need to continue to tweak my teaching practices.

Chapter 6 (Design of Learning Environment )& 7 (Effective Teaching)

1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
We have learned the influence our schema has on the way we evaluate or understand a situation and it guides our recall. The learner-centered environment is structured around the student and is sensitive to the knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs of the student.
The knowledge-center approach focuses on sense-making. When making sense of a situation we must use reasoning to help draw conclusions. In chapters 11/12 we learned a great deal about problem solving, reasoning, and decision making. This also is included in the community based learning.

2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?

I viewed the community-centered environments as being somewhat hard to incorporate at the elementary level. We can invite community people into our school to share their ideas and expertise. I guess another way to incorporate the community center environment is have projects within the school that the students could work on together as a team.
This approach kind of reminds me of student teaching/apprenticeship/internships-a learning environment structure where you learn by doing. I guess I just need to brainstorm ways to incorporate this environment into my teaching style.

I believe many community center ideas for younger students must come from the family itself. Examples: Does the family work on projects at home together? (yard work, garden caring etc.) Are the parents good examples of being community minded? Do their children observe their parents volunteering their services? Is the family involved in church organizations? Does the family encourage their young children to be involved in organizations that promote community? (scouts, 4H, etc.)

Also when reading about community I found it interesting that the Japanese students value listening to others and their reasoning. My students love to share their thinking but are not always polite(good) listeners when others are sharing. Also, I found it interesting how the cultures differ- the culture of the Japanese that they learn from errors, consider that a learner experience which deepens their understanding. I find that my students (in most cases) do not want to risk being wrong.

3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?

Reviewing the different types of learning environments reinforced the positives that each environment has to offer. I am more of a balance type teacher. I do not believe in jumping on a particular bandwagon b/c I feel that a combination of approaches reaches more students. The effective teaching examples demonstrated good teaching practices. Keeping that in mind I am encouraged to try to incorporate a variety of learning environments in my own teaching practices.

Chapter 10/13

April 6 Psychology

1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?

Both last week’s and this week’s readings had to do with language and how we process it. Last week we read about listening/reading and this week we read about speaking /writing and all the cognitive processes that occur (quickly) in order to be able to speak, read, write, and listen. Common vocabulary often circulates throughout the chapters: background knowledge, schemas, experiences, working memory, phonological loop, visual sketchpad, central executive. Each chapter, no matter what the topic is (language, mental imagery, memory strategies, etc.) –the key ideas keep spiraling around and it is demonstrated how it all links together.





2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
I move my hands a lot when I talk…Motor movements sometimes help us remember a word? Hmmmmm!

This not so much something about what I am not clear on but … Just thinking about my third grade writers and teaching writing, I am amazed third grade students can write after reading this chapter. Writing is such a difficult task for most students (now I can understand why), yet some students are naturals when it comes to writing. Some link good readers to good writers, however I have not found that to always be true. So, do those that seem to have a gift to write…have a more powerful/organized central executive, I guess…

3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work.

Well, for one the information from this chapter helped me further understand why the task of writing is so difficult. I do use many prewriting activities and a web to help student keep their ideas organized. Students often write a “list” of simple sentences rather than giving one detail and telling more about that detail. I believe I need to do more modeling because some students just need more exposure to using a web to help organize ideas. Revisions…ugh…it is a complex task that, again, I should model for the class over and over before I expect them to do this independently.

Chapter 9

1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?

Our cognitive processes such as memory and attention are necessary for understanding language. Reading also takes all cognitive processes - such as working memory, long term memory, mental images, schemas all working together. Metacomprehension is a part of metacognition. Metacomprehension focuses on your thoughts about how you are comprehending(monitoring one’s understanding while reading)

2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?

If we know that sentences with negatives are harder to process, why do we find them used often on ISAT’s and textbook tests? Are these tests trying to test the knowledge or trying to test processing?

3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work.

I feel that much of this information is applicable to the teaching field.

Even though the text and articles I have read support that younger students are not really capable of monitoring their comprehension- comprehension strategies should be taught to older students an adults to help them with metacomprehension, I still think it is necessary to expose my third grade students to all the reading strategies. I feel repeated exposure to strategies makes the students realize, for one, that when they read they should be thinking while they are reading(not just reading words). Exposing students to fix-up strategies will give students ideas of what to do when they realize they are not understanding. Students will form good reading habits by practicing strategies such as summarizing, making a picture, asking themselves questions while reading, etc.

Another important piece of information for me to keep in mind is to consider the way I write questions for a test or pose questions in class. The text pointed out important information about how negatives, passive voice, nested sentences and ambiguous sentences confuse the reader(listener).

Making inferences requires that the students draw on prior knowledge. Many low achieving readers lack experiences necessary for making inferences. I need to brainstorm ways to give my student more experiences (by perhaps reading more stories and a variety of stories to my students/field trips/virtual field trips/interactive websites/ etc.)

Chapter 12

1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?

When we problem solve we “reason through” a situation often using our background knowledge and memory of previous events or instances to help solve a problem or make decisions. On p. 399 the author explained that “conditional reasoning relies on the central executive component of working memory and that reasoning also requires language skills.” Confirmation bias –we seek out the positive rather than the negative goes along with Theme 3 of our book. In an earlier chapter we learned about how we remember positive information more accurately and we handle positive information better than negative information. We also learned about overconfidence in test taking and then in this chapter overconfidence in decision making.

2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?

There are many terms to keep straight. When I read them and the examples given, it makes sense. To pull it out and use in my daily conversation I would be sure to mess it up.

Would the crystal-ball technique be similar to “playing devil’s advocate”? Is it tough to think in this manner? (Conditional reasoning we tend to think of the positive rather than the negative.)?

3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?

In third grade we talk about the author’s purpose and point of view. This would be a good time to point out the “framing effect”.

After reading this chapter I can see decision making reasoning and understand perhaps how a parent/student/myself came up with a solution. (Understand that the decisions could be based on a bias of some sort/use of condition reasoning/judging according to similar characteristics)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

1. In previous chapters we have discussed bottom-up and top down processing. These play a part in problem solving. When problem solving, a person sometimes uses background knowledge, memory of similar structure to solve the problem. In this chapter and earlier chapters referred to ways to help our memory and/or problem solve by using visual images, charts, diagrams, etc.
2. I understand the situated-cognition approach. However I always thought of it in this way- EX. that students learn “how to add”/ “how to subtract” but then do not understand when or where or why to apply it. On p. 364 last paragraph, I did not think of it turned around the other way-a student would learn skills in a specific situation like a grocery store but would not transfer to a standardized math test.
3. Application: Allowing students to use a variety of ways to solve a problem. Having students share approaches so they may learn from each other. In reading a student’s knowledge base is so important in understanding text. The same seems to be true for students and problems solving skills and strategy use. Seems apparent that background knowledge needs to be developed.

Incorporating more authentic tasks into the curriculum would be beneficial for students as well. Demonstrating/modeling/ students sharing for students (fellow classmates) a variety of ways to problem solve to overcome mental set and fixedness.(think out of the box) On p. 380 it mentioned that working memory is reduces when great effort is required to suppress thoughts. It got me wondering about text anxiety for my young students. I need to think of ways to help relieve that kind of stress for students.

Chapter 8

1. Summary: This chapter explained the structure of semantic memory-organized information about the world. It explained four models. Feature comparison-memory Prototype-information is organized by the most typical member of that category. Exemplar approach-examples for a category are held in the memory. Network model-interconnection among related items. Our background knowledge also includes information from events, people and situations that is called our schema. A script is a type of schema-sequence of events of a familiar activity. Schemas can sway our interpretation and integration in our memory.

2. It connects with previous chapters on memory - how previous knowledge influences our memory. In previous chapters we have also discussed how information is organized.

3. Unclear: I understand what the word integration means in general but I felt that explanation on schemas/integration in memory in the book was lacking. I starting getting confused about priming and lots of information about different levels of categories. I tried to just keep the main idea in mind.

4. Application: Learning about the different semantic memory models may help me as a teacher to understand how students are organizing information. I noticed that our speech teacher discussed categorizing for developing language at an IEP meeting. So if students work on different categorizing activities it could develop different parts of the brain. (250) Developing different parts of the brain would perhaps add to the network of the connections.

5. Proof: I guess one example of proof is that our speech teacher uses categorizing to develop language in students. Examples in the text remind me of categorizing activities we do in reading to get students to make connections. Our routine activities (schemas and scripts) influence our attitudes toward particular situation and activities.

6. & 7. Importance and use: It could help explain difficulties of students that have trouble making connections. It could explain reactions of students to certain situations/activities. For example if they have had a bad experience they may avoid an activity. It could explain lags in student learning… Knowing this teachers can alter activities to aid in student learning. On p. 267 they discussed schema therapy. I thought that was very interesting. I guess teachers could use that same theory to help students gain trust in new schemas.

8. Other ways: I think we can look at this as another strategy. Ex. If it appears that a student only relies on one semantic memory model then perhaps instruction could include other models-different approaches.