Week 5 Remodel-Social Constructivism

BIG IDEA: Students will first learn about a particular subject from a lecture by the teacher. The lecture should be clear and concise. It should also help keep the students attention throughout the lecture. The lesson should then go into an activity that is group based. This activity should be clearly outlined by the teacher and each group should have students of all developmental levels.  After the group activity the student should explore the subject on their own through another teacher guided activity.

ACTIVITY: Before the lecture the teacher should understand and be aware of each students capability for the subject. The teacher will provide a lecture on fractions.  The lecture will be clear and concise. The students will then do an activity using legos to make fractions and record on a worksheet that will guide them through the activity and they will record the process that they go through. This activity will be done with a group. After the group activity students will then do a similar activity on their own.

REASONING:  Both Piaget and Vygotsky discussed the importance of knowing the ability of the students before the lesson starts. Also, each student has their own social contexts of what they are learning and their own developmental abilities. With the lecture the students first get being clear and concise the students have an ability to take in the information. Knowing the students capabilities the teacher should place students with different backgrounds and developmental abilities together in order to enhance the children's learning. The students can offer different perspectives of the assignment that the teacher may not be able to. This is actually something that I observed this week while at my field experience. The teacher was very creative with her placement of the students and had each group of students with different levels of ability. I could really see the students helping each other learn through their own experiences and knowledge. After having the time with the other students it is important to continue the exploration of the content. In module 7 it discussed again how repetition is crucial to learning and that individual exploration is just as important as group work. By having the students do a similar activity by themselves this would show the instructor if they really did learn from the group activity or just relied on the other students. 

Week 3- Redesign

RE-DESIGN

[My design is hidden at the bottom because I could not figure out how to type underneath it!]

Big Idea: 

Teachers give a clear concise lecture. The students are then allowed to practice their freshly learned information through worksheets or other various activities. The teacher then repeats the information in the classroom through different activities to encourage the students' brains to keep the information stored.

Activity:

The teacher can develop a clear concise presentation for the particular information that is being presented. The presentation should include a visual and a verbal description and explanation of the information.  After this the students could then do a worksheet in groups discussing the information they have just learned. After the worksheet the teacher could start a process of repetition. The students could go over the worksheet as a class to understand what they might have missed. The teacher could then have the students correct any mistakes they have had. The students could then do an individual worksheet and go through the same process with that worksheet. After that the students could then write a short paragraph about what they have learned.

Reflection: 

I chose this flow of design because what I read in the Module 11 about clear concise presentations, practice and repetition causing a more permanent place in memory made perfect sense to me.  In the reading the way information is processed is discussed and the reading states that clear concise presentations of information allow for a greater understanding of what is being learned. Also, the brain, according to Module 11, holds information better if visual and verbal cues are used during the learning process, this is why I added visual and verbal cues in the activity. Module 11 discusses early on that repetition and rehearsal will help individuals retain information instead of just having the information pass through one ear and out the other.  The Module 11 also discusses that practice throughout a time period and active use will allow the information to be better stored and kept in the brain over time. Based off of the readings and my previous experience in the classroom, I believe that this flow of learning would allow students to process the information clearly and to keep the information stored over a longer period of time.

 

Introduction and Explanation

My name is Rachel Van Nostrand. I am an elementary education major in my Sophomore year. I have switched my major multiple times. I started as a social work major, then on to Biology and now I believe I have found where I belong in elementary education.  Originally, I am from a small town of around 500 people in Iowa but I currently call North Webster, Indiana home.  My phone number is 574-529-0549. I currently reside at Campus Corner, my address is 1150 S. Clarizz Blvd, Bloomington, IN 47401.  My email address is rvannost@indiana.edu. I have baby- sat for multiple families starting in my middle school years. This past summer I worked at a summer program for children ages 5-12, there were approximately forty children on any given day.  P248 and G203 are both classes that have taught me about childhood development and how to communicate with children. From this class in particular I hope to:

• Start to develop more of an understanding of who I am as a teaching.
• Learn ways to teach children effectively based off of resent research.
• Become more confident in my understanding of children and teaching styles

I am not sure what my specific content area is going to be as of now.  I really enjoy creating and planning. I even thought about being an event planner at one point. I believe that these skills will help me be a more organized and thoughtful teacher.

 

              

Big Idea: Students learn absorb information through the process of problem solving and experimentation.

Example Activity: Teaching about the water cycle, a teacher could first use a lecture to inform students what the water cycle is and then ask students to think of a project that would show what the water cycle does.  The students could then do the project that they thought of.


I chose this model because I believe that teaching takes more than just lecturing. When I look back on my elementary years the lessons that stick best in my mind are ones that this pattern I have chosen seems to shine through.  Also, each and every student learns and thinks differently. Using this model the class can learn from each other based off of what they choose during the problem solving method and the outcome of their experimentation with the subject. This process creates a learning environment that makes children really think about the lesson and it also shows the teacher what students do not understand the lesson before an assessment occurs.