Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Week 5 Blog





Big Idea: A teacher introduces a certain subject to their students. Once children have some background information on the topic, it’s up to the student to continue to explore the subject and gain more knowledge. Once they become more knowledgeable, the student participates in some type of activity that enhances that knowledge. This is also known as social constructivism. They then study all the information they have been introduced to and are tested on it.  After they are tested, the student will receive a good grade for all the work they have put in. The teacher will praise the student for receiving such a good grade. The student will then want to continue the process in order to continue to receive good grades.

Activity/Example: The teacher wants her students to learn about chemicals. She creates a PowerPoint and teachers her students the main points they will need to know about chemicals. The students will then want to explore this subject area and find out more about the topic. Once they know about chemicals, they will participate in a science lab, experimenting with different chemicals and seeing different reactions. What they learn in the lab enhances their previous knowledge about chemicals. Next, the students need to study for their test. After they take the test, they receive an A and their teacher praises them for doing such a fantastic job. The student likes the feeling of feeling smart and having their teacher be proud of them, so they repeat the process for the next topic they’re going to learn.

Reflection: My model did not change from my previous model. Originally, my model was entirely based on hands on activities. However, after reading the first couple readings and many comments, I decided although hands on activities are very important, they are not actually doing the teaching.  Hands on activities are there in order to enhance the learning process. The teacher first has to introduce the topic and teach them the background material before the students can participate in any hands on activities. This idea also goes along with this week’s reading about social constructivism. Social constructivism is when an individual constructs knowledge through an interaction between the knowledge they bring to the situation and social/cultural exchanges within that context. The student brings the knowledge from the PowerPoint, which interacts with the knowledge that is presented during the experiment. I also have a studying picture in the equation because it is important to repeatedly review the information in order to learn. After reading Module 9, I decided to add the pictures of a student receiving a good grade and a teacher cheering. In Module 9, I learned about operating condition. Operating conditioning is a theory that says that behaviors associated with good consequences are more likely to occur again in the future.  I believe this to be very true. If students are praised for something good that they have done, they will much likely do it again in order to receive that praise again. 

1 comment:

  1. Hi Madeline,

    I'm a little bit confused about your post. You talk a lot about Module 9, which is all very interesting, but this week we were supposed to be talking about Module 9. I can, however, see some things in your model that would support either Piaget's notion of cognitive development.

    In reference to Piaget's stages of Cognitive Development, I think that your activity would do well under either concrete operational or formal operational. Concrete operational learners are able to develop reasoning skills and "engage in two-way thinking." They are also able to manipulate things, and this would be very helpful when doing a chemistry experiment. This would also be good for the formal operational stage if you had the students form their own hypotheses about the chemicals and what would happen if they knew some information about the chemicals themselves. However, most students in elementary school do not reach the formal operational stage. They might have a glimpse of it, but Piaget says that children do not reach this stage until they are about 12 years old.

    In your activity, would you have the students work in groups when doing the hands-on activity? One of Piaget's basic tenets states that there needs to be some social experience, and it works best between peers, and not as much between adult and child, because peers can challenge each other more and will be able to see multiple ways of interacting with chemicals.

    I do like your activity, and there are quite a few things in it that do correspond with Piaget, but I think you might have put in an old response. However, I hope the things I said were helpful!

    -Sarah

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