Internal/Affective Factors

I'm going to just focus on a few of the key internal motivational factors that I see used in our classroom. First of all the role of effort is emphasized often in this class. We are told that we will get out of it what we put into it. This is shown through our blogs, as well as the idea that we do not have points in the class. If we do the blogs, we can ultimately fight for our grade based on the effort we put into the blogs to show our understanding of the content. Similar to effort, we are given a choice. We are allowed to chose whether or not we would like to do the assignments on time, or even do them at all. Ultimately, we are the ones hurting ourselves by not doing them. Relevance is another topic that constantly comes up. We are never doing something that doesn't have a purpose, everything is relevant to the course and is something we can eventually use in our teaching careers. Based on the blog posts that were due last class, it seems everyone is interested in the material we are being taught. Mostly because it is SO different from what we are used to. In the end, it is our beliefs about learning that are being challenged and altered. This new idea of teaching/learning forces us to challenge what we already know and the ideas we've already formed to create a new way of thinking.

Obviously these are just a few. But looking at the list of motivational factors, these were the ones that really jumped out at me that are used in our classroom.

Not Sure Why...

Something that I do that is kind of weird and I'm not sure why I do it would be when I take notes, if I'm writing in pen and I mess up even just a letter I stop and start over on a new piece of paper. It drives me crazy to have to start completely over, especially if I've been taking notes during the whole class period. But I've been like this for as long as I can remember. Call it being a perfectionist but I'm not convinced that's what it is. I think I acquired this habit from my mom. She has always taken a lot of notes when she's on the phone or in the office and she does the same thing. I think her modeling has taught me that that is what I should do if I make a mistake taking notes. Another thing it could be is that my schema of taking "perfect" notes has been built from my mom/previous experiences and that results in my behavior today. A lot of my note taking/organization skills have come from me observing my mom at home and while she is at work so it wouldn't surprise me if this was a result of watching her too.

DLT, SLT, CLT

I thought it was really interesting to see how we were learning about CLT by actually using it ourselves. This made it MUCH easier for me to understand and look back and give a name to each step we actually took. In teaching, since everything we do should ideally have a purpose, it's interesting to think that every part of teaching should connect to one of the learning theories. So in order to keep myself in check and make sure my teaching is informed by the theories, I would have to evaluate myself and ask questions about what I'm doing. I'd have to ask myself, is there is social interaction between students or between students and myself? This would be one of the best ways to identify SLT because it is all based on social interaction. Social interaction includes from student to student as well as between the teacher and the student, it would also have to include a more knowledgeable peer. To see if I'm using DLT I'd want to question if I'm teaching abstractly or concretely and how I'm going back and forth and utilizing the spectrum to reach my students. For CLT I'd want to see how much of their past knowledge is being used and incorporated. I'd also have to question if schema is being used as well as how the students are making the new information fit into their previous knowledge. Are they using assimilation or accommodation? Obviously there are many more questions that can be asked once there is a specific lesson/topic. But I feel these are good starting points to see if you're on the right track to incorporating multiple learning theories into teaching!

DLT & SLT

Today I was able to FINALLY understand what DLT really is. I have been viewing it as a kind of teaching rather than something that influences how we teach. I found it really helpful to see how we would use this theory to help with classroom management which is a pretty hard task in itself. After discussing in class, I realized that through modeling, that is how I truly learned how to act in a classroom. Whether it was a group skit done by other members of my class or the teacher acting out different scenarios, it was much more beneficial when ideal behaviors were modeled. After learning and understanding more about the DLT, I found it interesting that Piaget put age limits on how the DLT works. I think it is hard enough to learn about this theory that being taught using parts of this theory would be even more difficult. I think it's apparent why you can't put age restrictions on how a student learns abstractly or concretely.

After finally grasping the concept of the Developmental Learning Theory, I was much more comfortable discussing and engaging more in group discussion. This made it easier once we started talking about SLT. I think that was because DLT and SLT are related. As it came up in class, the most knowledgeable peer seems to be a connector between the two theories. Both theories seem to rely on this peer, whether it is another classmate or the teacher. They also force us to acknowledge the role of other people in learning and utilize our peers to gain as much knowledge as possible.

I think in order to understand and build off of our knowledge of each theory, we have to truly understand the previous theory to learn about the next one. For example, knowing about the DLT informs us and makes it easier to learn about the SLT because they are related. Although the SLT relies mostly on language because language is socially constructed, they are similar and do have some common characteristics. To be good teachers, we have to be able to take bits and pieces of each theory and apply it to our teaching in order to help our students become well rounded and knowledgeable. This applies to the rest of the theories because they all must have some kind of relationship if they can eventually be used all together.

Developmental Learning Theory (DLT)

The most interesting aspect of class was discussing the idea of abstract vs. concrete teaching. It made me question how much I have really learned and how much of it was just memorizing some vocabulary that was thrown at me but never actually learned. I seem to have just remembered things just long enough to take the test and then I don't remember it after that. The idea of teaching abstractly is all too common, it seems that by giving notes, even word for word, is thought to be the most beneficial way to learn. However, this isn't true. After learning about the phases of the moon it was evident how much damage teachers have done by not using concrete evidence to teach us. It was a seemingly simple concept that none of us could produce the right answer to. However, when we did the partner demonstration and the group demonstration, it all made much more sense. Actually seeing the concept we were being taught was much more beneficial than just reading the words. And even when we had questions, it was helpful to see that things can be broken down to their simplest form and that's how people truly LEARN.

In high school, I acted as a student teacher in a forth grade class. Most of the time I observed but a lot of the time I had to work with the students who were not as strong as other students were academically. When the teacher pulled all the students together for a lesson about decimals and place value I was doubtful that all of them would be able to understand. However, she sifted out those who understood from those who didn't by first showing them a single example with some vocabulary. Some understood it, but most did not. That's when she began teaching more concretely, she pulled out a whole set of blocks to help them picture which place each number was in and she gave them a variety of examples to help them make more sense of it. While this isn't as concrete as she could've been, she was still able to reach all of her students, not just those who could think abstractly. This is how I want to teach so all of my students can gain something from my lessons.

As a Special Education teacher, I know I will have to break things down to the most basic ideas and things will have to be repeated. But being able to show my students what I want them to learn makes grasping certain things much easier. When I was in my practicum last year, I not only observed teaching styles but classroom styles as well. I saw a lot of color in all of the special education classrooms, there were not a lot of books or anything but there were lots of hands-on things they could use to help them learn basic skills. There were activities that helped them master the tying of their shoes and it broke that task down into a step by step process. I want my students to be able to teach themselves things and not rely solely on me for information and knowledge. I feel by using hands-on, concrete activities and devices, I will be able to help them help themselves too.