- How is tutoring going
- What you normally do with studets (who is he? what subjects do you cover?)
- Questions or concerns you have at this point?
Monday, March 10, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Week Nine: Blog Question
What is the most important things to keep in mind when developing brain-compatible Lessons?
With this vast amount of knowledge I learned throughout this course and with the assistance of How the Brain Learns, its hard to bring it all together into a lesson plan and keep in mind the large amount of information.
Unfortunately there is no answer to this question. There are several components to keep in mind when developing brain-compatible lessons but one component is not as important as the other. They are all important. Not every lesson plan can address every aspect of every possible teaching method but we can come very close.
We should keep in mind:
- Learning engages the entire person.
- The human brain seeks patterns in search of meaning.
- Emotion affects all aspects of learning, retention, and recall.
- Past experiences always affects new learning.
- The brain’s working memory has a limited capacity.
- Lecture usually results in the lowest degree of retention.
- Rehearsal is essential for retention.
- Practice does not make perfect.
- Each brain is unique.
While teaching we should set a strategy that captures attention, tell the students what you expect, state why they should know this, inform them of the knowledge they should know, clear and correct models, check for understanding, provide immediate feedback, and provide the opportunity during closure to attach sense and meaning to new learning.
Teachers can only hope they help all their students but they should also know that sometimes this does not always work. With the necessary knowledge, we can correct this and hopefully help all in some way.
With this vast amount of knowledge I learned throughout this course and with the assistance of How the Brain Learns, its hard to bring it all together into a lesson plan and keep in mind the large amount of information.
Unfortunately there is no answer to this question. There are several components to keep in mind when developing brain-compatible lessons but one component is not as important as the other. They are all important. Not every lesson plan can address every aspect of every possible teaching method but we can come very close.
We should keep in mind:
- Learning engages the entire person.
- The human brain seeks patterns in search of meaning.
- Emotion affects all aspects of learning, retention, and recall.
- Past experiences always affects new learning.
- The brain’s working memory has a limited capacity.
- Lecture usually results in the lowest degree of retention.
- Rehearsal is essential for retention.
- Practice does not make perfect.
- Each brain is unique.
While teaching we should set a strategy that captures attention, tell the students what you expect, state why they should know this, inform them of the knowledge they should know, clear and correct models, check for understanding, provide immediate feedback, and provide the opportunity during closure to attach sense and meaning to new learning.
Teachers can only hope they help all their students but they should also know that sometimes this does not always work. With the necessary knowledge, we can correct this and hopefully help all in some way.
Week Eight: Blog Question
How do emotions affect thinking?
What teaching have you observed that promotes higher order thinking?
Emotion plays an important role in the thinking process. Emotions play a role in long term memory, take precedence during cerebral processing and can impede or assist cognitive learning. When we like a topic, we are focused and interested and question the material. If we don’t like the topic, we spend the least amount of time as possible with the material.
Learning a new topic, students feel neutral. Challenging them with activities and higher-level thinking sparks an interest and therefore positive feelings towards the material. With positive emotion, students broaden their scope of attention and their critical thinking skills are enhanced. Students solve problems for themselves rather than wait for the answer.
In order to promote higher order thinking, we can refer to Bloom’s Taxonomy.
The lowest complexity is remember where students are able to define, label, recall and recognize where material is already learned and all that is required is bringing knowledge up. They don’t need to be able to comprehend it, just know it.
Understand allows students to summarize, discuss, explain, and outline concepts and describes the ability to make sense of the material in some fashion.
Apply is the ability to practice, calculate, apply and execute learned material in new situations.
Analyze is the ability to contrast, distinguish and deduce. The learner can organize and reorganize information into categories and understands the content and structure.
Evaluate allows the learner to appraise, judge, assess and critique the material by using their knowledge. This level usually has more than one answer but students use their knowledge to back up their perspective and are more receptive to other answers as well.
Create is the highest complexity and refers to imagining, composing, designing, and inferring material. It involves the production of creativity, forming new patterns and structures, and using divergent thinking. You refer back to all information, understanding, and application to produce this product.
Teachings that I have observed that promotes higher order thinking includes projects that opens students to do anything they please relating to the field. One project I did my sophomore year was relate Henry VIII’s six wives to the Desperate Housewives. Not only did I need to know background information on Henry VIII and his wives but relate them to tv characters and make connections and show evidence. Not only was it fun, but I put a lot of effort into it because I liked the topic and my teacher allowed me to be creative and not follow a strict structure.
Week Seven: Blog Question
What impact does hemispheric preference have on learning style?
Both left and right hemispheres of the brain are engaged in complex tasks but approach it in much different ways. Left brain monitors the areas for speech. It recognizes words, letters and numbers. It is analytical, evaluates factual material in a rational way, and detects time and sequence. The right brain gathers information more from images than words, looking for patterns, recognizes context of language, specializes in special perception and recognizes faces, places, and objects. These functions are rarely exclusive, and students use both sides of the brain while learning but one side is preferred. Their preference affects student’s personality, abilities, and learning style.
Teachers often teach the way they learned and use their own hemispheric preference. It is important to incorporate both hemispheric preferences for all students to truly grasp the context.
In society today, schooling seems to be left-brain dominated. They are run through time schedules, favor facts and rules and offer verbal instruction. Girls, who have been proven to be more left- hemisphere preference, feel more comfortable in this type of environment. Those who are right-hemisphere preferred, such as boys, feel more hostile towards schooling and prove to be more difficult in the classroom with discipline problems.
We need to teach the whole brain, and the entire classroom. One way to approach this is to deal with concepts verbally and visually. You can achieve this by writing key words, using diagrams showing the main ideas and their relations, or using a small excerpt video presentation and discussing the meaning. By using both visual and verbal techniques, students are more likely to understand the material.
Another approach is to design effective visual aids. How we position information should follow a pattern or a relationship with other concepts.
After teaching students the facts such as events in history ask students to think out of the box, become creative, and ask them thought-invoking questions like what if’s, or take a different approach with situations and have them make it their own.
Avoid conflicting messages and make sure your body language is in tune with your language.
Give options in testing and in completing assignments. Get out of the box and away from paper and pencil and creatively assess their knowledge using simulations, projects, and models.
What are the arguments for teaching the Arts?
How does art education develop cognitive growth?
Not one culture on this planet doesn’t have art. Art is a necessity for human experience and survival, therefore we should incorporate art into our educational curriculum.
- Art enhances the growth of cognitive, emotional, and psychomotor pathways.
- Schools are obligated to expose children to art.
- Learning the arts provides a higher quality of human experience.
Art develops cognitive competencies that benefit learners in every aspect of their education and prepare them for the demands of the 21st century.
- Perception of relationships: creating their own art, students recognize how parts of work influences each other and how they interact.
- An attention to nuance: The arts teach students that small difference can have large effects.
- Good things can be done in different ways and there are multiple solutions to questions and problems.
- Work in the arts help students recognize and pursue goals and can change goals in the process.
- In the absence of rules, you must use personal judgement and make a decision according to the situation.
- Art enhances the use of imagination and to visualize situations.
- Art allows students to invent ways to exploit constraints properly.
- Art helps students frame the world in new ways from an aesthetic perspective.
Art teaches life lessons in the classroom without defined structure or organization. Arts and science may seem like polar opposites but work hand in hand and only improve these abilities. The arts have proved to help SAT scores, reach students that were not otherwise being reached, improve self-concept, connects students, transforms the environment into a positive climate, challenges successful students, and connects learning experiences to the real world. Art is therefore essential to education and an important factor tying in all subjects and the student body.
Both left and right hemispheres of the brain are engaged in complex tasks but approach it in much different ways. Left brain monitors the areas for speech. It recognizes words, letters and numbers. It is analytical, evaluates factual material in a rational way, and detects time and sequence. The right brain gathers information more from images than words, looking for patterns, recognizes context of language, specializes in special perception and recognizes faces, places, and objects. These functions are rarely exclusive, and students use both sides of the brain while learning but one side is preferred. Their preference affects student’s personality, abilities, and learning style.
Teachers often teach the way they learned and use their own hemispheric preference. It is important to incorporate both hemispheric preferences for all students to truly grasp the context.
In society today, schooling seems to be left-brain dominated. They are run through time schedules, favor facts and rules and offer verbal instruction. Girls, who have been proven to be more left- hemisphere preference, feel more comfortable in this type of environment. Those who are right-hemisphere preferred, such as boys, feel more hostile towards schooling and prove to be more difficult in the classroom with discipline problems.
We need to teach the whole brain, and the entire classroom. One way to approach this is to deal with concepts verbally and visually. You can achieve this by writing key words, using diagrams showing the main ideas and their relations, or using a small excerpt video presentation and discussing the meaning. By using both visual and verbal techniques, students are more likely to understand the material.
Another approach is to design effective visual aids. How we position information should follow a pattern or a relationship with other concepts.
After teaching students the facts such as events in history ask students to think out of the box, become creative, and ask them thought-invoking questions like what if’s, or take a different approach with situations and have them make it their own.
Avoid conflicting messages and make sure your body language is in tune with your language.
Give options in testing and in completing assignments. Get out of the box and away from paper and pencil and creatively assess their knowledge using simulations, projects, and models.
What are the arguments for teaching the Arts?
How does art education develop cognitive growth?
Not one culture on this planet doesn’t have art. Art is a necessity for human experience and survival, therefore we should incorporate art into our educational curriculum.
- Art enhances the growth of cognitive, emotional, and psychomotor pathways.
- Schools are obligated to expose children to art.
- Learning the arts provides a higher quality of human experience.
Art develops cognitive competencies that benefit learners in every aspect of their education and prepare them for the demands of the 21st century.
- Perception of relationships: creating their own art, students recognize how parts of work influences each other and how they interact.
- An attention to nuance: The arts teach students that small difference can have large effects.
- Good things can be done in different ways and there are multiple solutions to questions and problems.
- Work in the arts help students recognize and pursue goals and can change goals in the process.
- In the absence of rules, you must use personal judgement and make a decision according to the situation.
- Art enhances the use of imagination and to visualize situations.
- Art allows students to invent ways to exploit constraints properly.
- Art helps students frame the world in new ways from an aesthetic perspective.
Art teaches life lessons in the classroom without defined structure or organization. Arts and science may seem like polar opposites but work hand in hand and only improve these abilities. The arts have proved to help SAT scores, reach students that were not otherwise being reached, improve self-concept, connects students, transforms the environment into a positive climate, challenges successful students, and connects learning experiences to the real world. Art is therefore essential to education and an important factor tying in all subjects and the student body.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Week Six: Blog Question
What is meant by the statement " Today's learning is tomorrow's transfer?"
Transfer gives us the ability to learn in one situation, and then use the learning in other situations. Transfer is the core of problem solving, creative thinking, and all other higher mental processes, inventions, and artistic products. Transfer during learning refers to the effect that past learning has on the processing of new learning. If you miss one step, most likely you won't be able to complete the other steps. Transfer of learning refers to the degree in which the learning is applied in future situations. Transfers can either be positive or negative. When past learning helps new learning, it is positive. If it interferes with new learning, its negative. There are several factors that affect transfer such as the context and degree of original learning, similarity, critical attributes, and association such as emotion.
Transfer depends on the quality of original learning prior to new learning. If we struggled with one subject, furthering with that subject will always seem difficult for that student. What we teach now will affect their future learning and makes a difference between a student who is discouraged, and the student who is ethusiastic to learn.
For me, I always struggled with fractions because I never understood it in grade school. I got so frustrated I would tune out the teacher who would teach fractions to me. I couldn't add fractions so therefore I felt I couldn't multiply fractions. Working with my student, Faisal who is brilliant in math, he told me we were working on fractions and I think I might've groaned because I always struggled with it when I was his age.
In order to prevent this, we need to make sure everything you teach will make it easier for students to build on these primary concepts. Make every lesson a positive experience by retaining the attention of students, helping them make past connections especially with emotions, and help them understand to the best of your ability new knowledge.
Transfer gives us the ability to learn in one situation, and then use the learning in other situations. Transfer is the core of problem solving, creative thinking, and all other higher mental processes, inventions, and artistic products. Transfer during learning refers to the effect that past learning has on the processing of new learning. If you miss one step, most likely you won't be able to complete the other steps. Transfer of learning refers to the degree in which the learning is applied in future situations. Transfers can either be positive or negative. When past learning helps new learning, it is positive. If it interferes with new learning, its negative. There are several factors that affect transfer such as the context and degree of original learning, similarity, critical attributes, and association such as emotion.
Transfer depends on the quality of original learning prior to new learning. If we struggled with one subject, furthering with that subject will always seem difficult for that student. What we teach now will affect their future learning and makes a difference between a student who is discouraged, and the student who is ethusiastic to learn.
For me, I always struggled with fractions because I never understood it in grade school. I got so frustrated I would tune out the teacher who would teach fractions to me. I couldn't add fractions so therefore I felt I couldn't multiply fractions. Working with my student, Faisal who is brilliant in math, he told me we were working on fractions and I think I might've groaned because I always struggled with it when I was his age.
In order to prevent this, we need to make sure everything you teach will make it easier for students to build on these primary concepts. Make every lesson a positive experience by retaining the attention of students, helping them make past connections especially with emotions, and help them understand to the best of your ability new knowledge.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Week Four: Blog Question
Does "Practice make perfect?"
How will the current view of intellegence impact you teaching and learning?
I'd like to think practice makes perfect but sometimes people's perfection doesn't get them as far as they'd like to go. There will always be obstacles to hold you back. Practice does however make permanent. I learned through a mini lesson i presented, information and memory, known as engrams, will decay and be thrown out by the brain if it is rarely used.
However in order to create perfection, learners need to repeat this skill overtime. The skill memory is then recalled and additional practice follows until it becomes almost second nature.
This current view of intellegence will greatly impact my teaching as wel las my learning. I remember back in high school how much I despised math and science. What i would do is study the material, memorize it for a day, take a test, ace it, and then kick out that information because I never used it again. Somehow, I want to take History or English and connect it to the student's life somehow. I want to form this giant puzzle that overlaps and combines with other subjects so the kids really know and understand the information rather than just memorize. My teacher was helping me one day as I was struggling with tests and I said ok ill go home and memorize it and he said No! I want you to know it. There's a difference. That teacher really taught me so much because I didn't just memorize it, I knew it and his activites have stucked with me to this day.
How will the current view of intellegence impact you teaching and learning?
I'd like to think practice makes perfect but sometimes people's perfection doesn't get them as far as they'd like to go. There will always be obstacles to hold you back. Practice does however make permanent. I learned through a mini lesson i presented, information and memory, known as engrams, will decay and be thrown out by the brain if it is rarely used.
However in order to create perfection, learners need to repeat this skill overtime. The skill memory is then recalled and additional practice follows until it becomes almost second nature.
This current view of intellegence will greatly impact my teaching as wel las my learning. I remember back in high school how much I despised math and science. What i would do is study the material, memorize it for a day, take a test, ace it, and then kick out that information because I never used it again. Somehow, I want to take History or English and connect it to the student's life somehow. I want to form this giant puzzle that overlaps and combines with other subjects so the kids really know and understand the information rather than just memorize. My teacher was helping me one day as I was struggling with tests and I said ok ill go home and memorize it and he said No! I want you to know it. There's a difference. That teacher really taught me so much because I didn't just memorize it, I knew it and his activites have stucked with me to this day.
Week Three: Blog Question
What metaphors could you use for an information processing model?
What are teaching implications in regards to the capacity of working memory?
My favorite metaphor for an information processing model, such as the brain, would be a network of highways. I think the kids can really visualize a network of speedways rather than neurons racing from one side of the brain to the other sending messages.
Some teaching implications in regards to the capacity of working memory should include some visual, lecture, and hands on activity that will engage the student. That student can then use that knowledge later and apply it to their everyday life. It's extremely difficult trying to find a way to engage such a large group of students and keep them involved and all have them understand. Students all learn different ways therefore you should always apply some techniques using visual, auditory and hands on.
What are teaching implications in regards to the capacity of working memory?
My favorite metaphor for an information processing model, such as the brain, would be a network of highways. I think the kids can really visualize a network of speedways rather than neurons racing from one side of the brain to the other sending messages.
Some teaching implications in regards to the capacity of working memory should include some visual, lecture, and hands on activity that will engage the student. That student can then use that knowledge later and apply it to their everyday life. It's extremely difficult trying to find a way to engage such a large group of students and keep them involved and all have them understand. Students all learn different ways therefore you should always apply some techniques using visual, auditory and hands on.
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