Week 8 cognitive development and language

1. I see how disequilibrium is not necessarily a good thing but it does motivate students, and i see how assimilation and accomodation play a role in it. I know from experience, that when i do not know how to do something that is not familiar to me, because i have no background knowledge of it, it takes me a while to figure it out, but i am determined to get it, so i i accomodate for that knowledge.

2. I see how the Zone of Proximal development applies in instruction. It is important that we know the level that students are in independantly, but it is important to know how much we can challenge them without confusing or frustrating them. It is important that with teacher, or peer help they can accomplish more.

3. I agree with Vygotsky on the role of language in logical thinking. I disagree with Piaget who says thinking comes before language. I agree that they are intertwined. I think that we naturally think, but in order to make sense of our thinking we need to have language to attach to our thinking. I can't say i'm thinking about a tree, if i did not have the langauge to know that a tree is called a tree.

4. I think that encouraging studnents to be active learners is an important instructional principle. I do think there are other ways they learn, but actively learning i think helps students remember more to store in thier long term memories. I know from experience that when i am learning to make a new food dish,i have to not just read the recipe, but practice it. I use the background knowledge that i have from cooking and link that to the new recipe. The next time i cook that meal, i know how to cook it, and if it wasnt good the first time i made it, i can tweak it.

I think an upside to implementing this science tour, is children get a chance for hands on experience using kidspiration. Students can manipulate the animals and learn by doing. The downside to this, is that not all students have access to a computer and so it would not be able to be given as homework. There might also not be enough computers in the school for all the students in the class to use and so it would be more time consuming to implement a lesson using this.
I also commented on sand,kellean and marias voicethread.

week 7 Social Constructivism

1. In elementary school i remember a cooperative learning activity we had, when we had to build a volcano in groups, ans then present it with information about the volcano to the class. We all had a specific idea that we were in charge of. It was important that we trusted each other in our group to get the work done and it was alos important that we did out part as we were graded as a group. In college, this semester, in our management class we were to read a book as a group and were assigned specific sections of the book to create a presentation for the class. We are presenting next week, but are all resposible for our part to contribute to the group.

2.I do think cooperative learning promotes learning to a degree. Sometimes when put into groups we only learn the items that we are in charge of presenting or whatever it is that we have to do with the information. but, on the other hand we have group members to lean on if we do not understand a concept. I think cooperative learning in the earlier grades helps alot, in the higher grades and college, i think it helps as far as getting more done in a small time and lightening the work load on an individual, but i do not think it helps learn the concepts more in the higher grades.

3.Instructional conversations: Assumes that teaching involves conversation- that students have something to say and that is invalid.
Reciprocal questioning: a method of reinforcing new concepts, information, or procedures that students have learned in class.
The differences are that instructional conversations have students converse about the text instead of questions and reciprocal questioning is using how and why questions. Both have the same goal in mind is to understand the material, one has conversation and the other questions.

4. Ability-grouping is best in reading groups, where students have the same ability and capabilities. Mixed-groups would be beneficial in group projects. Students with different abilities can all contribute in this setting. Not all the students have to be good at reading or math.

science challenge Activity idea

1. Create a power point with four habitats and the characteristics of each habitat. After the teacher explains the characteristics of each habitat, she will then provide visual images of the animals that live in each of those habitats and why, and also the characteristics of the animals that helps them survive in a specific habitat. The four habitats to be discussed are: wetlands, fores, rain forest, and dessert. While the power point is being explained by the teacher, the students will be providing feedback about what they know about the habitats and animals at hand and using prior knowledge to associate the new knowledge with previous knowledge. Once the students understand the different habitats , the teacher will introduce kidspiration, The students will place at least four animals in each habitat. Once the students have completed the activity, they are going to share with a partner the animals that they put in each habitat and why they did.

2. i)Content:Standard 3
Students will develop an understanding of their environment. Objective 1
Investigate relationships between plants and animals and how living things change during their lives.
ii) Pedagogy: Classifying, inferring, predicting, measuring and acquiring and processing data (constructing table of data, constructing graphs, describing relationships). I feel like this is a good pedagogy for the content because we are going to determine which animals belong in a certain environment. By doing so we are classifying the relationships between animals and their environments(plants).
iii)Technology:We will be using power point and kidspiration to determine the characteristics of animals and their environments through a power point and then using kidspiration to visually see the content and it will provide them practice with the tool.
iv) Representation: i think the representation we will use, gives us a chance to assess the content we are trying to teach. It will help us understand the knowledge that the student has. I think the assessment will also give the students a visual representation to understand the content more.

virtual tour

I watched Marias, Alexandras and Gillians. I think virtual tours are an interesting technology to use in the classroom. I think the upside of virtual tours would be the interesting part ehy bring to a lesson or assignment. I think students can learn so much through a virtual tour and it gives them an opportunity to navigate their way through the tour. The downside to using a google earth tour would be the difficulty level. I think in the younger grades it might be hard for students to understand exactly what to do or where to go. Also this kind of activity would have to be a school assignment as not all students have access to technology.

IPT 301 Week 6 Behaviorism

1. An example of contiguity learning in school. When i study for a test,after i get a good grade on a test and after i have tried so many different study techniques. When i get a good grade i associate it with the study techinique that i used.
2. After reading the book five love languages, i realized that one of my love languages is words of affirmation and it helped me think about the question: what reinforcement i thought what effective in elementary school. I think when my teacher would praise me for the good work i had done, i felt good and tended to work harder and because my teacher would tell me i was always doing good work, i thought i was a good student and throughout school i did my schoolwork,and in those times when i was in elementary school candy was still allowed and so that always helped to. and i loved stickers.
3. I think reinforcement schedules could promote good work to. I would use a schedule maybe to say after 15 check marks for good behavior on the board i would have a class wide reward or maybe if a student handed in thier homework assignments, after every third homework assignment completed the students would get free time, or reading time.
4. Behaviorism suggests that after we do something that is wanted of us, we recieve a reward and that is what motivates us to continuosly do that something. In the gospel we are given the choice to chose between right and wrong and the reward that we get from it, is the promise that we get from chosing the right is not something tangible, but something we belive in.