chapter 2

Chapter 2

One of the most cited theories of human development is that of Swiss biologist Jean

Piaget. After reading about Piaget’s basic assumptions (p. 27-32) look with particular attention

at the stage of child development you would like to teach. The other most cited theory of

human development belongs to Russian developmentalist Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky’s theory of

cognitive development leads us to expect greater diversity among our same-aged students than

Piaget. Given these two influential theorists’ ideas on cognitive development, how might you accommodate students who are not yet working at the level of their peers?

I would like students to work with other students that are at a skill level above themselves. Hopefully this way they can raise their zone of proximity and gain more knowledge in the subject matter.  I hope to keep the groups in my classroom as diverse as possible.

Theories in educational psychology promote the idea that language plays a critical role in

cognitive development. Examine Table 2.2 (p. 51), paying particular attention to the age range

that you are interested in teaching. Consider how you might incorporate or adapt the strategies presented for use with your own students.a

I hope to work with students at the elementary level in my art classroom. I know that when working with this age group (this applies to high school as well) that I can not be sarcastic.  Students will take every thing that I say literally and at face value. It is going to be important to mean what I say and say what I mean.... you know what I mean. I also will not be able to say things like "you really let the cat out of the bag. " or anything like that.  The students might think that they really had a cat in a bag and that is just cruel.  

I want to be as clear as possible with my students and make sure that they feel free to ask me to clarify if they have any questions or concerns in my classroom.

Social Cognitive Theory

Which of the learning activities/skills can you think of that lend themselves to learning through modeling? How might self-efficacy and self-regulation contribute to the intervention plans you use in your case study?

I think most things that are observable can be taught through modeling. Some things that I want to teach in the art room with modeling would be things like...
how to clean brushes
how to work well in groups
how to stay organized
how to stay on task
how to raise your hand when asking a question

ect. ect. 

I think these task lend themselves to modeling because they are things that are observable in the classroom. Some of them such as cleaning brushes and staying organized are things that I could model to my students myself. 

My case study, Lisa needs to learn how to work well in a group. To be able to do this she needs to believe that she can be successful in working in a group. This will raise her self efficacy and motivate her to really try.  I would want Lisa to be able to use self regulation skills to improve her group dynamic. Lisa and I would work together to create specific goals to increase her success in groups. She would have to diligently work towards these goals daily. Hopefully if she has a high self efficacy about working well in groups and uses self regulation skills she can increase her success in groups.  

Barb Rentenbach Presentation

When I went to Barb Rentenbach's presentation not knowing what to expect. First her friend talked about Barb and about her writings. She had us read some of Barb's writings aloud.  It was interesting to hear her words coming out of our mouths. Her writings were clever and witty. She seemed to read constantly because her work was riddled with quotes and novel words.
The best part of her presentation was for her interview. She opened up the floor to for us to ask her any question we would like. Most of the people in the audience seemed nervous about asking her questions. When met with a lull in the crowd she typed out " One mute per show please." She is such a funny person! The thing that I learned from this presentation is not to judge someone by the way they look. On the first impression I would have thought that Barb was not capable of doing much. Thank god for augmentative communication. I am so glad that Barb is able to express what she is thinking. She has so much to share with the world.

Behaviorism

How would you define successful mastery of your lesson objectives from a behavioral view of learning? Consider your CSEL intervention case study. Are there tools from a behaviorist view for either encouraging productive behaviors or discouraging undesirable behaviors that you could apply to the case? What are they?

Mastery of objectives would look like for me that a child can demonstrate what I was trying to teach them. For example if I was going to do a lesson on contour lines, I would first do a pretest and ask them to draw a contour line drawing of a dog or a cup in the box. Then we would go through our lesson. I would demonstrate what a contour line drawing is and what it is not. The students would practice making contour line drawings and would then incorporate them in whatever project we are doing. I would give the students the same test I gave them before the lesson to see if they now know how to do a contour line drawing of cup or a dog. I would also asses the students for their use of contour line drawing in their projects. I think that the post and pretests are the really key thing to qualify this as a behaviorist perspective. If the students were not able to master the concept of contour line I would reflect on what did not work in my teaching of that concept. If I was set on making sure 100% of the students mastered that concept before we worked on another one I would go through the whole process again but modify my teaching style or the learning environment. 

Some awesome examples of pre and post testing


The elementary case study revolves around Lisa, who is having difficulty working in a group. She is upset if she does not receive the job that she wants and interrupts other members of her groups. If I was to use a behavioral view of learning to try to discourage undesirable behaviors and increase productive behaviors the first thing I would do is monitor. I would keep a chart that shows when and in what circumstances she is misbehaving to try to understand the cause of the problems. I would reward Lisa with lots of praise or positive reinforcement when she cooperates with her group. I would use negative punishment like taking away recess time if she cannot work with her group.   I would monitor the situation and keep track of how she is progressing. 

Meta Cognitive Skills

Consider a lesson plan you might use. Which metacognitive skills/abilities are involved as students gain facility/knowledge in this domain? Think of an activity or lesson component that explicitly teaches one or more metacognitive and one or more problem solving skills.

http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.utk.edu:90/stable/20715385

I just found the BEST article in the universe that relates to this topic. It is a study where they two compared   classrooms of third grade students. One class used metacognitive teaching techniques and one did not. They compared the artwork of the two classrooms made during their art time and found that the students in the metacognitve class "understood the thematic nature of art, generated more strategies, and developed a solution clearly related to their theme." The students were given a theme such as friendship or happiness and asked to create an art piece concerning their theme.  During the planning process of making the work students were encouraged to think aloud about their theme.

The teacher that was incorporating metacognitive skills in her classroom did so by encouraging a "culture of thinking."  She did thinks everyday that raised students self awareness, especially about their own thinking and focused on planning and problem solving.  This study suggests that art teachers and classroom teachers should work together to increase the metacognitive skills of the students. 

So if I was going to make a lesson that would encourage the students to gain metacognitve skills I would definitely focus on planning. I would have students do a lot of sketching before the create a product and talk about their work with me and other students.  I would give students a theme to work under but not be too specific so that they their work does not end up all looking the same. OR I could let the students choose a theme at the beginning of the year and keep a process/sketch book that explores their chosen theme. This way their art is relevant to their lives and they are doing a lot of self reflection. 

Chapter 6 QTC

What are the essential skills and/or learning outcomes you want your students to know and be able to do that relate to cognitive learning? 

I would like for my students to be able to access long term as well as short term memory in the classroom.  To do this they would need to be able to pay attention, which will be in part my responsibility making sure lessons are engaging. I would like for students to be able to know and understand all of the elements and principles of design. They should be able to have a full understanding of the concepts and be able to use elaboration to be able to explain how they work together in an artwork. 

How might your knowledge of the memory processes guide your instructional decisions?

I know from the teacher project on chapter 6 that it is important to use hot cognition to engage students.  I think it may be a good idea to give a short little survey to be able to know what the students are really interested in. I can then model the projects to their personal interests and to draw in their own life experience into the projects. This will make the learning much more meaningful, engaging long term memory. I will try to teach using a lot of different types of stimulation like visual, verbal, and personal exploration be able to capture the attention of all types of learners. 

Chapter 15

Turn to p. 559 in Ormrod’s text.  Now, imagine that you are meeting with Ingrid’s grandmother today to explain her scores on the recent standardized achievement test pictured at the bottom of p. 559.  What will you tell her about Ingrid’s performance? her strengths? her weaknesses?

If I was meeting with Ingrid's grandmother I would first start off with the positive. I would let her grandmother know that she did a great job on her social studies, science and reading comprehension scores.  We would talk about how these subject areas are where Ingrid really shines.  

I would then address math concepts where Ingrid scored as average. I would discuss how she is preforming in the class in math concepts and let her know that we will work to keep Ingrid at this level as well as improve in this subject area. 

We would then talk about spelling and math computation, where Ingrid tested at below average. I would let Ingrid's grandmother know what we will be doing in the classroom to help Ingrid improve those scores. We would also review how Ingrid was doing in my class with these concepts to make sure that she was not just having a problem with standardized testing.  I would also suggest working an extra 15 minutes a day at home on these concepts. I would refer her to this website http://www.kidsspell.com/ where Ingrid could play games on the computer to help with her spelling.  This would be a fun website for Ingrid to practice her math computation skills. http://www.coolmath4kids.com/ I would emphasize to Ingrid's grandmother to try to work practice in without overwhelming the student. I would let her know that I will be monitoring her progress and communicating with her regularly.