5 E's Lesson

Engage: I will demonstrate Math Dance moves. I can have a few students come up and I will have them do some of the moves. This engages them because it looks ridiculous and is funny.
Explore: Students come up with their own Math Dance Moves. They discover ways they can get their body to look like math. They collaborate with other students to come up with group moves or discover what other students have done.
Explain: Students come up and tell the class why they chose their move and what math concept it represents.
Elaborate: Students work in groups to try and make mathematical sense of the different moves. They can make an equation with their moves, etc. They are working together to try and fit all of their ideas together. They can present their moves to the class.
Evaluate: Students fill out an exit sheet at the end asking them if they liked the idea their group came up with. The exit slip will also ask them to come up with one more way they could have put the moves together. I will ask them if they enjoyed the activity, and what they felt they've learned from doing it.

Information Processing

Social Cognitivism Study Guide

Social Cognitivism Study Guide

Objectives:

●     Identify ways in which an understanding of triarchic reciprocal causality will impact your future teaching.

●     Describe ways to encourage self-regulation in your students.

●     Explain ways to successfully model skills and knowledge in your curriculum.

●     Analyze the impacts of self-efficacy in students and in the teacher.

Key Terms:

Pages 269-273

Learning (social cognitive view) – Learning happens through observation of others.

Social cognitive theory – Theory that adds concern with cognitive factors such as beliefs, self-perceptions, and expectations to social learning theory.

Observational learning – Learning by observation and imitation of others.

            Attention – As teachers, we need to capture students’ attention to the critical features of the lesson by making clear presentation and highlighting important points.

            Retention – In order to imitate behavior, you have to remember it. The material will need to be represented in some way like verbal or visual, or both. Practice helps us remember.

            Production – Practice, feedback, and coaching.

            Motivation and Reinforcement – If we anticipate being reinforced for imitating the actions, we may be more motivated to pay attention, remember, and reproduce the behaviors.

Vicarious Reinforcement – Increases the chances that we will repeat a behavior by observing another person being reinforced for that behavior.

Self-reinforcement – Controlling your own reinforcers.

Self-management – Use of behavioral learning principles to change your own behavior.

Pages 423-434

Triarchic reciprocal causality – An explanation of behavior that emphasizes the mutual effects of the individual and the environment on each other.

Self-efficacy – A person’s sense of being able to deal effectively with a particular task.

Human agency – The capacity to coordinate learning skills, motivation and motions to reach your goals.

Modeling – Changes in behavior, thinking, or emotions that happen through observing another person – a model.

Factors that affect observational learning (Table 27.2, pg. 428)

Developmental Status	Use strategies, compare performances with memorial representations, and adopt intrinsic motivators.
Model Prestige and Competence	Observers pay greater attention to competent models. Modeled behaviors convey info about functional value.
Vicarious Consequences	Valued consequences motivate observers. Similarity in attributes or competence signals appropriateness and heightens motivation.
Outcome Expectations	Observers are more likely to perform modeled actions they believe are appropriate and will result in rewarding outcomes.
Goal Setting	Observers are likely to attend to models who demonstrate behaviors that help observers attain goals.
Self-efficacy	If they can do it, I can too. They do things they see other people doing that they feel like they should be able to also.

Live Models (not in text) – An actual individual demonstrating or acting out a behavior.

Symbolic Models (not in text) – Involves real or fictional characters displaying behaviors in books, films, television programs, or online media.

Teachers’ sense of efficacy – A teacher’s belief that he or she can reach even the most difficult students and help them learn.

Review Self-regulated learning (pages 435-441) – Analyzing the Task, Setting Goals, Devising Plans, Enacting Tactics and Strategies, Regulating Learning.

Summary:

I didn’t think I’d agree with this theory as much as I do. This section talked about how people learn by watching others. This is where modeling comes in. I learned math primarily by reading solutions manuals. As I was following what was going on, I was able to learn the math involved. It’s hard to learn something if you haven’t seen it done. If you were trying to learn how to throw a basketball, it would help to watch someone do it first. I also liked the idea, “If you can do it, I can too.” Lots of people have that sense of ego. Why not exploit it?

Information Processing in the Classroom

Explain how you will use the information processing model of memory to teach a lesson in your content area. Your response should include specific ideas for gaining and maintaining students' attention, activating prior knowledge, rehearsing information in working memory, dual-coding, and encoding to long-term memory.

Learning and using the Quadratic Equation:
Attention: Attention is attained and maintained by having engaging activities and switching the activity ever 10-15 minutes. The class starts with a fun game that refreshed solving polynomials by factoring. The activity would be one that gets them up and moving. Some of the students could be a factor. For example, one student would be (x-3), and another would be (x+2). Other students would be equations like (x^2 - x - 6). The factors would have to go find an equation they belong to and the equation would be searching for it's factors. The activity would switch into a brief explanation of how some equations can't be factored so we need to learn a new method for solving equations. I would then introduce the formula and we would learn the quadratic formula song. The song would play with the lyrics on the board.
To add some psych terms... the first activity is activating their prior knowledge after gaining the attention. We are using that knowledge of equations to move into the formula. We rehearse the song over and over to make sure the students are keeping it in working memory. We are sing the words while also looking at the equation visually. They are using both visual and speech to learn the idea. By using the catching song, it's being encoded to long-term memory. We can also repeat the song every few days to make sure it's making it to long-term memory. Tada! Beautiful lesson... er, it probably is only half a lesson.

Behaviorism in the Classroom

Explain how you might use shaping to help students learn a difficult concept or skill. Be specific - choose a specific concept or skill and narrate how you will shape it. Remember that shaping MUST include reinforcement for each successive attempt.

Shaping:
Difficult Skill: Linear Inequalities.
Step 1. Review Inequalities - Play quick review game. Students enjoy playing and it allows the students to feel success when they get the right answer.
Step 2. Graphing of lines - Every day they walk in, we'll do the desk hunting game where students will be given an equation and they will need to find the seat that has the correct graph on it. In order to motivate them to learn it well, I will have days where if all the students can find their correct seat in a certain amount of time, they can chose their own seat the next day.
Step 3. Graphing Inequalities - I can add these into the Seat Swapping activity too, but I could also do challenges in class for the kids to be able to explain when and where to shade, etc. These challenges can be set up like an obstacle course. They would move through the course by answering the questions correctly. Half of the kids would be at stations while the other half moved through the course. Then they would switch. This activity provides motivation for the students by creating a desire for them to complete the course but my motives would be to have them accomplish the goals for the lesson.

I know these are all games type activities. I was having a hard time thinking of other things that could act as reinforcers.

Constructivism Study Guide

Constructivism Study Guide

Objectives:

●     Analyze the impact of constructivist pedagogies on teaching and learning

●     Consider how constructivist techniques can be implemented effectively in your content area

●     Discuss when constructivist techniques are most appropriate

●     Identify constructivist theories beyond what is provided in the text

●     Promote higher-order thinking and conceptual understanding

●     Evaluate the use of constructivist pedagogies in the US and other nations

Key Terms:

Pages 371-383

Constructivism – View that emphasizes the active role of the learner in building understanding and making sense of information.

Individual constructivism – are concerned with how individuals build up certain elements of their cognitive or emotional apparatus.

Radical constructivism – Knowledge is assumed to be the individual’s construction; it cannot be judged right or wrong.

Social constructivism – learning means belonging to a group and participating in the social construction of knowledge.

Community of practice – Social situation or context in which ideas are judged useful or true.

Situated learning – The idea that skills and knowledge are tied to the situation in which they were learned and difficult to apply in new settings.

Complex learning environments – Problems and learning situations that mimic the ill-structured nature of real life.

Social negotiation – Aspect of learning process that relies on collaboration with others and respect for different perspectives.

Structure (not in text) - Help kids see structure of the discipline. How it fits into the big picture.

Readiness (not in text) - What are they ready for? Based on ZPD.

Intuition (not in text) - Allowing kids to go through with their gut.

Motivation (not in text in this context!) - Kids are motivated by things that are real and authentic.

Spiral curriculum – Bruner’s design for teaching that introduces the fundamental structure of all subjects early in the school years, then revisits the subjects in more and more complex forms over time.

Enactive (not in text) - Hands on processing. (Baby Books, crinkle, fuzzy, etc.)

Iconic (not in text) - Processing using imagery. (Picture Books)

Symbolic (not in text) - Processing using symbols like words, letters, etc. (Chapter books)

Pages 384-404

Discovery learning (not in text) - Figuring out based on prior knowledge. Feedback is necessary.

Authentic activities (not in text) - Individualized. Tasks identical or similar to what they'll encounter later in life.

Inquiry learning – Approach in which the teacher presents a puzzling situation and students solve the problem by gathering data and testing their conclusions.

Problem-based learning – Methods that provide students with realistic problems that don’t necessarily have “right” answers.

Anchored instruction – A type of problem-based learning that uses a complex, interesting situation as an anchor for learning.

Cognitive apprenticeship – A relationship in which a less experiences learner acquires knowledge and skills under the guidance of an expert.

Reciprocal teaching – A method, based on modeling, to teach reading comprehension strategies, designed to help students understand and think deeply about what they read.

Cooperative learning (spend some quality time with this - there are some great suggestions!) – Situations where elaboration, and argumentation are integral to the activity of the group and where learning is supported by other individuals.

Reciprocal questioning – Students work in pairs or triads to ask and answer questions about lesson material.

Jigsaw – A learning process in which each student is part of a group and each group member is given part of the material to be learned by the whole group. Students become “expert” on their piece and then teach it to the others in their group.

Structured controversy – Students work in pairs within their four-person cooperative groups to research a particular controversy.

Pages 405-414

Service learning – Combines academic learning with personal and social development for secondary and college students.

Digital divide – A split between access to technologies between those who fall into high versus low socioeconomic status.

Summary:
My way of thinking! I'm extremely interested in hands on learning. I'm kinestheic and so I've always learned this way. I've wondered if it would help most people or just some. In learning about out learning styles, there was a pretty even distribution in our class. I wonder if it would be as effective for other types of learners. There are many different approaches to teaching constructively. These range from cooperation to inquiry learning. I love the idea of having students come up with their own desires for learning, and the teacher helping them. This is how young children learn. If they aren't interested, they won't do it. This allows for students to remain excited about learning rather than hating it after being in the education system.

Marcia's Identity States

Behaviorism Study Guide

Behaviorism Study Guide

Objectives:

• Identify when the use of behaviorist strategies is most appropriate
• Describe a system of reinforcers and punishers you might use in your future classroom
• Discuss the differences between classical and operant conditioning

Key Terms:

Pages 241-252

Learning (Behaviorist definition) – Process where experience causes permanent change in knowledge or behavior.

Contiguity – Association of two event because of repeated pairing.

Stimulus – An event that activates behavior.

Response – Observable reaction to a stimulus.

Classical conditioning – Association of automatic responses with new stimuli. (Pavlov's dogs)

    Neutral stimulus – Stimulus that's not connected to a response.

    Unconditioned stimulus (US) – Stimulus that automatically produces an emotional or physiological response.

    Unconditioned response (UR) – Naturally occurring emotional or physiological response.

    Conditioned stimulus (CS) – Stimulus that evokes an emotional or physiological response after conditioning.

    Conditioned response (CR) – Learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.

Generalization (not in text) – the tendency to respond in the same way to different but similar stimuli.

Discrimination (not in text) – the ability to perceive and respond to differences among stimuli... more advanced form of generalization.

Operant conditioning – Learning in which voluntary behavior is strengthened or weakened by consequences or antecedents.

Reinforcement/Reinforcer – Use of consequences to ALWAYS strengthen behavior, or an event that follows a behavior to increase likelihood their do it again.

Positive reinforcement – strengthening behavior by presenting a desired stimulus after behavior.

Negative reinforcement – Strengthening behavior by removing an adverse stimulus then the behavior occurs.

Punishment – Process that ALWAYS weakens or suppresses behavior.

Presentation punishment – Decreasing the chances that a behavior will occur again by presenting an aversive stimulus following the behavior; also called Type I punishment.

Removal punishment – Decreasing the chances that a behavior will occur again by removing a pleasant stimulus following the behavior; also called Type II punishment.

Continuous reinforcement schedule – reinforcer comes after every appropriate response.

Intermittent reinforcement schedule – reinforcer comes after some but not all responses.

Extinction – disappearance of a learned response.

Cueing – providing a stimulus that “sets up” a desired behavior.

Pages 253-268

Applied behavior analysis (ABA) – The application of behavioral learning principles to understand and change behavior.

Premack Principle – states that a more-preferred activity can serve as a reinforcer for a less-preferred activity.

Shaping – reinforcing each small step of progress toward goal or behavior.

Positive practice – practicing correct responses immediately after errors.

Response cost – punishment by loss of reinforcers.

Group consequences – rewards or punishments given to a whole class for adhering to or violating rules.

Contingency contract – contract between teacher and student that specifies what student must do to earn a reward or privilege.

Token Economy (token reinforcement system) – system where tokens are earned for academics and behavior which can be exchanged for a reward.

Fading (not in text) - behavior modification where an initial prompting to perform an action is gradually withdrawn until the need for it fades away.

Summary:

There are lots of ways to condition or train people to respond in desirable ways. You can do individual conditioning or group/class conditioning. I'll need to figure out what kinds of things I'll be able to do in my school and what kinds of conditioning would be best for my classes. I found the severe behavior problems information interesting. Students with severe behavior problems seem to behave better when they can earn something monetary. I really liked the contingency contract for completing assignments graph. I like how the chart moves up so it shows progress always in an upward slant. I like the idea of students being able to gauge how they are doing with this chart. I could make a standard chart for everyone in the class and they could fill out their progress as we go throughout the semester with regular check ups. My only question would be what the chart looks like if they got behind on one section and was on track later... so they might have several late assignments.