1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
Technology used the way it was shown in chaper 9, follows Theme 1 by making learning active. The kind of technology projects that the book talked about requires students to use: problem solving, decision making, deductive reasoning, heuristics, top-down processing, working memory, long-term memory, metacomprehension and creativity. Many of the projects talked about will build the students’ schemas. Projects like this take all the things we have learned in this class and puts them all to use. John Dewey would love these projects.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
My questions this week are not really on what I read, but are connections to what I read. In our elementary schools, K -3, I would say that this are probably 3 -4 teachers, out of about 35 teachers that use technology in a way that advances cognition. Not only that, but a great majority of the same teachers are not computer/technology savvy at all. My daughters attend high school in the same district and there are only a few of the high school teachers that are using technology to promote cognition. My district is in Carlinville, which is a rural community. I am just wondering if technology weak in our district because we are rural and are behind the times, or is this what it is like in many districts. Let me know – thanks.
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
Technology is something that I love and can really get into, so chapter 9 was great. I can’t wait to try a project like Monsters, Mondrian and Me (p.s. I could not get into the site that the text recommended to see the artwork and paragraphs related to that project. Did anyone else have luck?) The children will have to use several skills: technology skills, writing skills, art skills, problem solving skills and colaboration. In order to have the other class get the picture just write, they class sending the info will have to work together to figure out have to better get their image across using words only.
I would like to set up a class website again so we can get parents more involved in our learning environment. I know I personally am always surfing the web to find other teacher’s website to find new ideas. I think having webcam conversations with classroom in other countries would be a great learning tool too.
I know whenever I have done a technology project with my students, I usually end up learning just as much as them because first I have to learn the program and second, the kids usually catch on more quickly than me and then are able to navigate better than me. So I end up asking them questions. And the students learn from each other.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Week 14 Reflections
I am going to be bold this week and veer somewhat from the usual reflection questions. This week I am going to reflect on what comes to my mind as I am reading. Some of it will fit under the three questions we usually answer and some of it won’t (I will indicate with a number if it is answering a specific reflection question). But they are my meaningful learner-centered reflections.
As I was reading the first two pages in chapter 6, I wondered if the factory model of school was really were standardized testing first evolved (2). I also wondered if WWI pushed reading to a higher level (2). If so, that is very interesting.
I was glad to see that the author emphasized that all four learning environments (community, learner centered, knowledge centered and assessment centers) are needed to make a well-rounded learner. I get so tired of people jumping on educational bandwagons and throwing out the baby with the water. For instance when whole language instruction was new on the forefront, many schools jumped on the whole language band wagon got rid of phonics (our district being one of them). Consequently, there were a couple of years where students had a big hole in their education and many resulted in poor readers.
I do like that a learner centered environment requires the teacher to observe, question and converse with the student. The following quote for the learner centered section is my question #3 inspiration, “The teachers attempt to get a sense of what each student knows, cares about, is able to do, and wants to do. Accomplished teachers ‘give learners reason,’ by respecting and understanding learners’ prior experiences and understandings, assuming that these can serve as a foundation on which to build bridges to new understandings.” I want to be one of those accomplished teachers. I can be at times but I know I need to do it more often and be more consistent about it (3).
The part about knowledge centered environments that really hit home it that it includes metacognition (1). After reading our textbook, I am really sold on metacomprehension and metacognition. I don’t know that I had thought that much about it before reading our text. But I am definitely working on having children think about their thinking. Questioning themselves – does this make sense? (this is something that I am applying to my teaching - 3)
Assessment center environments reminded me of Understanding by Design (1), where you start with a Big Idea and you look at what you want to assess first, and then design your unit around that. I also liked that they talked about students assessing themselves and using teacher assessments as a way to revise thinking which fits in with the whole metacognitive idea. That is something I am trying to build into all of my subject areas.
As far as the community centered environment, I definitely feel that family is a huge factor in a child’s learning experience and I try all the time to include family. A child who comes from a family who is involved in the learning process will get a much better education than the one who does not.
As I was reading the first two pages in chapter 6, I wondered if the factory model of school was really were standardized testing first evolved (2). I also wondered if WWI pushed reading to a higher level (2). If so, that is very interesting.
I was glad to see that the author emphasized that all four learning environments (community, learner centered, knowledge centered and assessment centers) are needed to make a well-rounded learner. I get so tired of people jumping on educational bandwagons and throwing out the baby with the water. For instance when whole language instruction was new on the forefront, many schools jumped on the whole language band wagon got rid of phonics (our district being one of them). Consequently, there were a couple of years where students had a big hole in their education and many resulted in poor readers.
I do like that a learner centered environment requires the teacher to observe, question and converse with the student. The following quote for the learner centered section is my question #3 inspiration, “The teachers attempt to get a sense of what each student knows, cares about, is able to do, and wants to do. Accomplished teachers ‘give learners reason,’ by respecting and understanding learners’ prior experiences and understandings, assuming that these can serve as a foundation on which to build bridges to new understandings.” I want to be one of those accomplished teachers. I can be at times but I know I need to do it more often and be more consistent about it (3).
The part about knowledge centered environments that really hit home it that it includes metacognition (1). After reading our textbook, I am really sold on metacomprehension and metacognition. I don’t know that I had thought that much about it before reading our text. But I am definitely working on having children think about their thinking. Questioning themselves – does this make sense? (this is something that I am applying to my teaching - 3)
Assessment center environments reminded me of Understanding by Design (1), where you start with a Big Idea and you look at what you want to assess first, and then design your unit around that. I also liked that they talked about students assessing themselves and using teacher assessments as a way to revise thinking which fits in with the whole metacognitive idea. That is something I am trying to build into all of my subject areas.
As far as the community centered environment, I definitely feel that family is a huge factor in a child’s learning experience and I try all the time to include family. A child who comes from a family who is involved in the learning process will get a much better education than the one who does not.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Week 12 Reflections
1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
As I was reading the section on speaking, it amazed me how many processes are going on in the mind just to be able to speak one sentence. I had never thought of this before. The brain truly works at remarkable speeds. This also showed me all the processes from our past readings that are involved – phonological loops, top-down processing, working memory, semantics, schema, central executive, and long term memory. So many processes work together to make just one sentence.
The same applies to producing written work; so much going on in one’s brain just to produce one little sentence. The brain truly is an amazing organ.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
This all seemed to make sense to me. Although I continue to be baffled by the top-down processing. I know that seems silly, but I just haven’t gotten that straight in my brain and it continues to come up in every chapter.
Also, I was wondering about the introduction at the beginning of chapter 9. It gave four goals of speech production. The goals did not contain – To inform. Isn’t one of our goals of speech simply to pass along information?
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
One thing that hit me right off the bat was that when I am teaching, I had better be following the rules of pragmatics. Before I begin any lesson, I need to be sure that my listeners have common ground with me. For instance, if I am teaching a lesson about weather and I am talking about how the meteorologist makes predictions based on the air pressure, the air currents, etc…, I had better make sure that the children know what a meteorologist is, or the lesson has no meaning. Having common ground is very important in teaching; and I think that is one area that is often overlooked. One cannot assume common ground has been established especially with the growing population of poverty children that is appearing in the scho
As I was reading the section on speaking, it amazed me how many processes are going on in the mind just to be able to speak one sentence. I had never thought of this before. The brain truly works at remarkable speeds. This also showed me all the processes from our past readings that are involved – phonological loops, top-down processing, working memory, semantics, schema, central executive, and long term memory. So many processes work together to make just one sentence.
The same applies to producing written work; so much going on in one’s brain just to produce one little sentence. The brain truly is an amazing organ.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
This all seemed to make sense to me. Although I continue to be baffled by the top-down processing. I know that seems silly, but I just haven’t gotten that straight in my brain and it continues to come up in every chapter.
Also, I was wondering about the introduction at the beginning of chapter 9. It gave four goals of speech production. The goals did not contain – To inform. Isn’t one of our goals of speech simply to pass along information?
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
One thing that hit me right off the bat was that when I am teaching, I had better be following the rules of pragmatics. Before I begin any lesson, I need to be sure that my listeners have common ground with me. For instance, if I am teaching a lesson about weather and I am talking about how the meteorologist makes predictions based on the air pressure, the air currents, etc…, I had better make sure that the children know what a meteorologist is, or the lesson has no meaning. Having common ground is very important in teaching; and I think that is one area that is often overlooked. One cannot assume common ground has been established especially with the growing population of poverty children that is appearing in the scho
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Week 12 Reflections
Week 12 Reflections
1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
As shown in Demonstration 9.1, How Other Processes Contribute to Language, it is pretty evident that Language uses all the other processes we have learned so far. Visual and auditory recognition are used to read and hear words. “Eye movement is the second perceptual process that is central to reading” – so saccadic eye movement is a biggy. Working memory helps us process and interpret the letters, phonemes and words. Long term memory is especially helpful in making inferences and obtaining metacomprehension from the text. Metacomprehension allows us to think about our thinking of the reading and decide whether we have an understanding of the text. Spatial cognition helps us to create visuals in our mind for what we are reading. Semantic memory helps us with the meaning of words and concepts.
Another thought occurred to me when I read about Negatives. When I read about it being harder for us to process sentences with negatives I thought of the Pollyanna Effect. But then I read on and it also mentioned Theme 3 – “Our cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
Last week I was confused about a lot of stuff. This week it all seemed to make sense to me. Although, it does blow my mind to think about Artificial Intelligence. I can’t imagine the amount of work it would take to get a computer to have language comprehension.
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
Well, since we are teaching children how to read and comprehend in second grade, this is a very applicable chapter. 75% of my class came in reading below grade level, with 50% of the class reading at a beginning first grade level.
Many of my children read aloud when they are reading a story. I guess this makes sense after reading Chapter 9, which says that people use the indirect-access hypothesis when they “translate the ink marks on the page into some form of sound before we can locate information about a word’s meaning.”
It is also encouraging to read that “children with high phonological awareness have superior reading skills” because I do a phonemic awareness program with my children.
As far as the whole-word approach verses the phonics approach argument, I believe doing a little of both is the best way to teach language. Children need the phonics skills in order to be able to decode new words, but they also need a base of words which they can recognize immediately (including the words that do not follow the phonetic rules).
One thing that bothered me was what they said about drawing inferences. The author stated that you would better at drawing inferences if you had background information or expertise on a topic. Unfortunately, my impoverished children do not have a lot of either, so as their teacher, it is my job to help build up those areas.
1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
As shown in Demonstration 9.1, How Other Processes Contribute to Language, it is pretty evident that Language uses all the other processes we have learned so far. Visual and auditory recognition are used to read and hear words. “Eye movement is the second perceptual process that is central to reading” – so saccadic eye movement is a biggy. Working memory helps us process and interpret the letters, phonemes and words. Long term memory is especially helpful in making inferences and obtaining metacomprehension from the text. Metacomprehension allows us to think about our thinking of the reading and decide whether we have an understanding of the text. Spatial cognition helps us to create visuals in our mind for what we are reading. Semantic memory helps us with the meaning of words and concepts.
Another thought occurred to me when I read about Negatives. When I read about it being harder for us to process sentences with negatives I thought of the Pollyanna Effect. But then I read on and it also mentioned Theme 3 – “Our cognitive processes handle positive information better than negative information.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
Last week I was confused about a lot of stuff. This week it all seemed to make sense to me. Although, it does blow my mind to think about Artificial Intelligence. I can’t imagine the amount of work it would take to get a computer to have language comprehension.
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
Well, since we are teaching children how to read and comprehend in second grade, this is a very applicable chapter. 75% of my class came in reading below grade level, with 50% of the class reading at a beginning first grade level.
Many of my children read aloud when they are reading a story. I guess this makes sense after reading Chapter 9, which says that people use the indirect-access hypothesis when they “translate the ink marks on the page into some form of sound before we can locate information about a word’s meaning.”
It is also encouraging to read that “children with high phonological awareness have superior reading skills” because I do a phonemic awareness program with my children.
As far as the whole-word approach verses the phonics approach argument, I believe doing a little of both is the best way to teach language. Children need the phonics skills in order to be able to decode new words, but they also need a base of words which they can recognize immediately (including the words that do not follow the phonetic rules).
One thing that bothered me was what they said about drawing inferences. The author stated that you would better at drawing inferences if you had background information or expertise on a topic. Unfortunately, my impoverished children do not have a lot of either, so as their teacher, it is my job to help build up those areas.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Week 11 Reflections
1. How does this topic fit into what I have learned already in this course?
Theme 3 talks about how people handle positive information better than negative information. The same is true for conditional reasoning tasks. It is easier to understand positive conditional reasoning than it is to understand negative. The confirmation bias also agrees with Theme 3 because it says that people are more likely to confirm a hypothesis by affirming the antecedent. In the framing effect, the people also leaned towards the choices that portrayed a positive effect.
Memory is something that is used in so many parts of our cognition. To engage the availability heuristic, you must use your memory.
Top-down processing seems to come up again and again. The belief-bias effect, the confirmation bias, the illusory correlation, the anchoring heuristic and the adjustment heuristic are all examples of top-down processing.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
I had a hard time understanding the four kinds of reasoning when I looked at Table 12.1 because it was too abstract and ambiguous for me. I understood it much better when they referred to Demonstration 12.1. But, I must say it is something I really have to think about, it doesn’t come easily to me.
The anchoring and adjustment heuristic really confused me. I understood the part about buying a jacket in the store, but they lost me after that.
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
I will have to say that of all the chapters we have read so far, this is my least favorite and I don’t know that I can apply much of this to my classroom. For most of the chapter, I felt like I was reading a probability or statistics book. The few things that I can take away are : “Performance is better if the propositions are high in imagery.” I find that many of my students are very visual, so I do try to encorporate a lot of visuals in my lessons. The text also said that performance was better when concrete example were used verses abstract examples. Once again, I find this to be very true for my students, so I try to make my examples very concrete. The last thing I am taking away from this chapter is that if people are usually overconfident about things, I need to apply that to my classroom. If my students state the they think they understand, I had better make sure that they really do because they may just have overconfidence in the subject.
Theme 3 talks about how people handle positive information better than negative information. The same is true for conditional reasoning tasks. It is easier to understand positive conditional reasoning than it is to understand negative. The confirmation bias also agrees with Theme 3 because it says that people are more likely to confirm a hypothesis by affirming the antecedent. In the framing effect, the people also leaned towards the choices that portrayed a positive effect.
Memory is something that is used in so many parts of our cognition. To engage the availability heuristic, you must use your memory.
Top-down processing seems to come up again and again. The belief-bias effect, the confirmation bias, the illusory correlation, the anchoring heuristic and the adjustment heuristic are all examples of top-down processing.
2. What am I still not clear on in this week's reading(s)?
I had a hard time understanding the four kinds of reasoning when I looked at Table 12.1 because it was too abstract and ambiguous for me. I understood it much better when they referred to Demonstration 12.1. But, I must say it is something I really have to think about, it doesn’t come easily to me.
The anchoring and adjustment heuristic really confused me. I understood the part about buying a jacket in the store, but they lost me after that.
3. Under what conditions would I apply this material to my own teaching/work?
I will have to say that of all the chapters we have read so far, this is my least favorite and I don’t know that I can apply much of this to my classroom. For most of the chapter, I felt like I was reading a probability or statistics book. The few things that I can take away are : “Performance is better if the propositions are high in imagery.” I find that many of my students are very visual, so I do try to encorporate a lot of visuals in my lessons. The text also said that performance was better when concrete example were used verses abstract examples. Once again, I find this to be very true for my students, so I try to make my examples very concrete. The last thing I am taking away from this chapter is that if people are usually overconfident about things, I need to apply that to my classroom. If my students state the they think they understand, I had better make sure that they really do because they may just have overconfidence in the subject.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Week 10 Reflections
I did my reflection for this week before I knew about the changes, so I am going to post my reflection in the old format. Next week I will change to the new format.
Week 10 Reflection Questions
1. How can I summarize this reading in a few sentences?
I will have to say that I got caught up in trying to solve the problems in the demonstrations in this chapter on problem solving. In order to problem solve, you must be able to figure out which information is important and then represent it. Symbols, matrices, diagrams and visual images were four of the most effective methods to represent the information in a problem.
After you represent the problem, you need to solve the problem. Several strategies were discussed – algorithms, heuristics (hill-climbing heuristic, means-end heuristic), computer simulations, and analogies.
There are several factors that influence problem solving – expertise, mental set, functional fixedness, stereotype threat, and insight vs. noninsight problems.
Creativity was also touched upon. Creativity is considered an area of problem solving and requires finding solutions that are novel, high quality and useful. People can be intrinsically or extrinsically motivated in their creativity. Also some find that incubation helps to reignite creativity.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
At the beginning of the chapter, the author talked about the interrelatedness of the cognitive processes. To do problem solving, you must also have attention, memory and decision making. Problem-solving also involves a lot of top-down processing.
3. What am I still not clear on?
I know this sounds silly, but top-down and bottom-up processing continually come up in the chapters and I still don’t think I truly understand those two processes.
4. How would apply this to my own teaching/work?
Problem solving is a skill that we want all children to have and yet it seems so elusive to them. As teachers we want them to become expert problem solvers, so if I follow what the book says, I will need to build up their knowledge base about problem solving, represent problems in different ways, teach a multitude of problem solving strategies, and help them to become better at monitoring their problem solving progress.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
The one thing that I have noticed in this chapter (and it may have occurred in a lot of other chapters, but I wasn’t paying attention) is that much of the research is more than 5 years old. This makes me wonder how reliable it is since Mr. Martinez wanted all of our articles to support our workshop to be from the last five years. Mr. Martinez talked about “classic research”, which I am assuming is older in date, but what is the difference?
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
Problem solving is a big topic at the elementary schools and it is an area where children really struggle. Problem solving is used in so many subjects and so many areas of our lives that it is a very important skill to attain. I guess it is comforting (and discouraging at the same time) to know that it takes at least 10 years of intense practice to gain expertise in a specific area. That makes me think, that in second and third grade, the children will not be expert problem solvers, but I should not be discouraged because hopefully by middle school the kids will master it.
7. When would I actually use this – under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
I guess I have never really connected creativity and problem solving together, but it makes perfect sense the way the author describes it. My students love art and are very creative in that respect. My kids hate problem solving and moan every time that we do it. I am wondering if there is a way I can tap into their creativity and combine art and problem solving. For example (and I know this isn’t the greatest example but I will need more time to think of great examples) I can give four children one picture and tell them that they have to reproduce it. Stipulations would be that they all have to work on the picture at the same time, they can only turn in one copy. Hopefully they would come up with cut the picture in four pieces, reproduce that piece, and then put the pieces back together to make a whole. OR make a picture for me and you can’t use your pencils, your markers, your crayons, your scissors or your paint. Hopefully they would come up with tearing colored paper and gluing it down on white paper, or gluing down objects, or etching a picture with a stick, etc….
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
I do not think problem solving is something that can be done fast or cheap. I think it is a life long process and some adults still haven’t attained it.
Week 10 Reflection Questions
1. How can I summarize this reading in a few sentences?
I will have to say that I got caught up in trying to solve the problems in the demonstrations in this chapter on problem solving. In order to problem solve, you must be able to figure out which information is important and then represent it. Symbols, matrices, diagrams and visual images were four of the most effective methods to represent the information in a problem.
After you represent the problem, you need to solve the problem. Several strategies were discussed – algorithms, heuristics (hill-climbing heuristic, means-end heuristic), computer simulations, and analogies.
There are several factors that influence problem solving – expertise, mental set, functional fixedness, stereotype threat, and insight vs. noninsight problems.
Creativity was also touched upon. Creativity is considered an area of problem solving and requires finding solutions that are novel, high quality and useful. People can be intrinsically or extrinsically motivated in their creativity. Also some find that incubation helps to reignite creativity.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
At the beginning of the chapter, the author talked about the interrelatedness of the cognitive processes. To do problem solving, you must also have attention, memory and decision making. Problem-solving also involves a lot of top-down processing.
3. What am I still not clear on?
I know this sounds silly, but top-down and bottom-up processing continually come up in the chapters and I still don’t think I truly understand those two processes.
4. How would apply this to my own teaching/work?
Problem solving is a skill that we want all children to have and yet it seems so elusive to them. As teachers we want them to become expert problem solvers, so if I follow what the book says, I will need to build up their knowledge base about problem solving, represent problems in different ways, teach a multitude of problem solving strategies, and help them to become better at monitoring their problem solving progress.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
The one thing that I have noticed in this chapter (and it may have occurred in a lot of other chapters, but I wasn’t paying attention) is that much of the research is more than 5 years old. This makes me wonder how reliable it is since Mr. Martinez wanted all of our articles to support our workshop to be from the last five years. Mr. Martinez talked about “classic research”, which I am assuming is older in date, but what is the difference?
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
Problem solving is a big topic at the elementary schools and it is an area where children really struggle. Problem solving is used in so many subjects and so many areas of our lives that it is a very important skill to attain. I guess it is comforting (and discouraging at the same time) to know that it takes at least 10 years of intense practice to gain expertise in a specific area. That makes me think, that in second and third grade, the children will not be expert problem solvers, but I should not be discouraged because hopefully by middle school the kids will master it.
7. When would I actually use this – under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
I guess I have never really connected creativity and problem solving together, but it makes perfect sense the way the author describes it. My students love art and are very creative in that respect. My kids hate problem solving and moan every time that we do it. I am wondering if there is a way I can tap into their creativity and combine art and problem solving. For example (and I know this isn’t the greatest example but I will need more time to think of great examples) I can give four children one picture and tell them that they have to reproduce it. Stipulations would be that they all have to work on the picture at the same time, they can only turn in one copy. Hopefully they would come up with cut the picture in four pieces, reproduce that piece, and then put the pieces back together to make a whole. OR make a picture for me and you can’t use your pencils, your markers, your crayons, your scissors or your paint. Hopefully they would come up with tearing colored paper and gluing it down on white paper, or gluing down objects, or etching a picture with a stick, etc….
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
I do not think problem solving is something that can be done fast or cheap. I think it is a life long process and some adults still haven’t attained it.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Week 8 Reflections
1. How can I summarize this reading in a few sentences?
Chapter 8 focuses on two topics – semantic memory and schemas & scripts. Semantic memory is our knowledge about the world around us. I like the way the book explained that semantic memory includes encyclopedia type knowledge, language knowledge and conceptual knowledge. There are four approaches to semantic memory – feature comparison model (dealing with features and characteristics), prototype approach (comparing with an “ideal” model), exemplar approach (judging resemblance to an exemplar) and network models (organization of info in webs).
Schemas are previous knowledge attained about a subject, event or object. It is the background information that you bring to the table with you. To me, schemas seem like the backbone of learning.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
Earlier in chapter 5, the author talks about amnesia patients. Do amnesia patients keep their schemas since it is knowledge? Or since it is knowledge gained in the past, is it lost.
I do like how the author always reintroduces concepts and tells us what chapter we learned it in. To lay ground work for chapter 8, the author brought up concepts from chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. I think the author does a nice job of showing connections throughout the text.
3. What am I still not clear on?
The whole section on semantic memory was a little confusing to me. The first three approaches seemed so similar and then the network model seemed so complicated.
4. How would apply this to my own teaching/work?
I enjoyed the section on schemas and I can definitely apply that to my teaching. I am going to introduce the concept (and the actual word) “schema” to my class. I am going to talk about how it is the “thing” we use to make connections from our present knowledge to our future knowledge.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
I enjoyed the Boundary Extension demonstration. They did the experiment with college students and I did it with some of my friends and got the same results. I also like how it tied in to inaccurate eye witness reports. It also make me wonder if Boundary Extension is also part of the reason we can read Demonstration 2.3
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
Schemas seem like an important piece of the puzzle to becoming a learner with metacomprehsion. If students can draw upon their schemas, it will help them acquire more understanding in any subject they are learning about.
7. When would I actually use this – under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
While schema could be used with any subject (because it is necessary for all subjects), I think I will start using it more in reading. I am reading a book now that is talking about using schemas in reading. It teaches the children to use their schemas to make connections to what they are reading. When they read, they should be thinking…That reminds me of…I’m remembering… I have a connection to…. I have a schema for…. I can relate to …. If children are doing this, then they are being metacognitive about their reading.
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
I think a quick way to show the importance of schemas with my class, would be to do the One-Minute Schema Determiner. I would write “St Louis Science Center” on the board (a place my class just visited on a field trip). Then I would have the children shout out anything they knew about St. Louis Science Center. The children would be able to fill up the board with things they knew about it. Then on the other half of the board I would write “Immokalee”. I would then ask them to shout out things that they knew about Immokalee. They responses would be complaints about not knowing what it is or questions about what it is. We would then reflect on our responses and come to the conclusion that what we did on the St. Louis Science Center side was schema.
Chapter 8 focuses on two topics – semantic memory and schemas & scripts. Semantic memory is our knowledge about the world around us. I like the way the book explained that semantic memory includes encyclopedia type knowledge, language knowledge and conceptual knowledge. There are four approaches to semantic memory – feature comparison model (dealing with features and characteristics), prototype approach (comparing with an “ideal” model), exemplar approach (judging resemblance to an exemplar) and network models (organization of info in webs).
Schemas are previous knowledge attained about a subject, event or object. It is the background information that you bring to the table with you. To me, schemas seem like the backbone of learning.
2. How does it fit into what I have learned already in this course?
Earlier in chapter 5, the author talks about amnesia patients. Do amnesia patients keep their schemas since it is knowledge? Or since it is knowledge gained in the past, is it lost.
I do like how the author always reintroduces concepts and tells us what chapter we learned it in. To lay ground work for chapter 8, the author brought up concepts from chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. I think the author does a nice job of showing connections throughout the text.
3. What am I still not clear on?
The whole section on semantic memory was a little confusing to me. The first three approaches seemed so similar and then the network model seemed so complicated.
4. How would apply this to my own teaching/work?
I enjoyed the section on schemas and I can definitely apply that to my teaching. I am going to introduce the concept (and the actual word) “schema” to my class. I am going to talk about how it is the “thing” we use to make connections from our present knowledge to our future knowledge.
5. What proof does the author offer that makes me believe this is valid? Do I believe it? Why?
I enjoyed the Boundary Extension demonstration. They did the experiment with college students and I did it with some of my friends and got the same results. I also like how it tied in to inaccurate eye witness reports. It also make me wonder if Boundary Extension is also part of the reason we can read Demonstration 2.3
6. Why is this important? What does it help improve or explain or predict?
Schemas seem like an important piece of the puzzle to becoming a learner with metacomprehsion. If students can draw upon their schemas, it will help them acquire more understanding in any subject they are learning about.
7. When would I actually use this – under what kind of circumstances and for what kind of students?
While schema could be used with any subject (because it is necessary for all subjects), I think I will start using it more in reading. I am reading a book now that is talking about using schemas in reading. It teaches the children to use their schemas to make connections to what they are reading. When they read, they should be thinking…That reminds me of…I’m remembering… I have a connection to…. I have a schema for…. I can relate to …. If children are doing this, then they are being metacognitive about their reading.
8. Are there other ways to accomplish the same thing that are faster, cheaper, and/or better?
I think a quick way to show the importance of schemas with my class, would be to do the One-Minute Schema Determiner. I would write “St Louis Science Center” on the board (a place my class just visited on a field trip). Then I would have the children shout out anything they knew about St. Louis Science Center. The children would be able to fill up the board with things they knew about it. Then on the other half of the board I would write “Immokalee”. I would then ask them to shout out things that they knew about Immokalee. They responses would be complaints about not knowing what it is or questions about what it is. We would then reflect on our responses and come to the conclusion that what we did on the St. Louis Science Center side was schema.
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