Week 3 Reflections

1. We have three kinds of attention processes (attention being a concentration of mental activity) – divided attention, selective attention and saccadic eye movements. I think with all three processes it was shown that it is more difficult to do two things at once, but you can be trained to get better at it. Different parts of our brain control different kinds of attentions. Consciousness is awareness and is related to attention. Research suggests that there are many things we are aware of but you may not be able to put that awareness into words.
2. Attention process need to be used in order to have top-down processing, face perception, background on visual object, etc… You have to be able to attend in order to have perception.
3. Is the Stroop Effect related to color only? Can you be born with a brain lesion?
4. The saccadic eye movement intrigues me because I have a student who I think has visual tracking problems. So I guess her saccadic eye movements are not working properly. How does one fix this?
5. I thought the neuroscience research was pretty validating. I find all of the workings of the brain fascinating. The brain lesion section was interesting.

6and 7 This is important because it gives me more information as to how my students may be processing things. I would like to look at my ADHD students with this chapter in mind. I hope it will give me more insight as to how I can best serve them.

8. This question is still confusing to me.

Personal reflection – I have a hard time wrapping my brain around page71 in my book (I the sixth edition). I don’t think I would be able to read and take dictation simultaneously. Were these students able to comprehend what they read? Can the low to average ability student be trained to do this? What does the training look like?

Week 2 Reflections

I would like to reflect on the website article by Mayer and Clark.
1. I think they were emphasizing the importance of presenting/teaching new material in several avenues - words, pictures and sound. But they also stressed not to get "wordy". It reminded me of Dragnet - "Just the facts, ma'am."
2. I think this fits in with chapter 2 because it talked about how visual and auditory learning affect us. We all use both to help us learn. Some just lean on one more heavily than the other.
3. At this point I think I am catching everything.
4. In my own teaching I try to introduce new concepts in several ways. For instance, in science, we read about magnets with attracting and repelling. We talked about things that we knew were attracted to each other (kids and their moms) and things that repelled each other (kids and smelly garbage). Then we "played' with magnets to actually experience attract and repel. Finally, we acted out attract and repel.
5. I guess their proof would be in their resources, but I believe it because I have seen it in my own classroom.
6. This concept is important to remember because all people have different modes of learning. So it is important to teach to those different modes. Also important not to lose your students by going on and on and on.
7. As I said earlier, I use this everyday in my classroom. Although, I would have to say that Julie has me rethinking how I do the walls in my room.
8. Not sure how to answer this one.