IPT 301 Teaching Reflection

We tried to incorporate the same principles of teaching and learning that we were discussing into our lesson. This included constructivism: both individual and social, disequilibrium, and methods adaptation. We hope that by using a lot of class participation, the ideas would be more likely to be processed into long term memory.

One main focus of our presentation was constructivism and comparing and contrasting individual and social constructivism. In order to incorporate this principle into our presentation we divided the class in half and game them a math problem. We had half of the class try to figure out the problem in groups so that they were participating in social constructivism and the other half had to work independently to solve the problem to demonstrate individual constructivism. We then had the class talk about the advantages and disadvantages that they came across while working in groups or independently.

We also implemented disequilibrium into our lesson by asking the class a couple of questions that are commonly answered incorrectly. Sure enough, the class answered these based on the common misconceptions and we then told them that they were incorrect which made them want to learn what the answers really were. By making the class think they were correct about something and then telling them otherwise, they were driven to discover the real information. This demonstrated to everyone that they could use this same principle with their elementary students.

Adaptation was also implemented into our lesson as we gave the class the animal sorting task. We were then able to discuss the methods the class used to sort the animals and find out who used assimilation, accommodation, or avoidance. Seeing this in a real life situation made it easier to see how these would look in a child.

I think that one of our strong points in our teaching was that we used a lot of class participation. By asking the class to participate and truly experience some of the principles we were teaching, they were able to get involved and understand. We also spent a lot of time preparing and had planned what we were going to talk about.

We had a weakness in the area of time management. We obviously spent too much time in the earlier parts of our lesson because we were already running out of time before we got to the assessment. Another area where we were weak is we could have discovered more about schemes and operations because we were still a little shaky in these areas. Next time we could definitely be better managers of time and be better prepared to answer any questions that the class may have.

IPT 301 week 8

From my experience I support the view that constructivism is a better way to learn new things than through lectures. I definitely have noticed that when I personally get to explore and experiment with something, it is easier for me to understand. Also, the things that I have done and seen in action are far easier for me to internalize and keep in my long term memory than the things that I have merely heard or seen someone else show me.

I definitely think that there is a place for both individual and social constructivism in education. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages but with both you can have a balanced education. I have seen kids work together and share their knowledge to create a joint project where every member of the group benefited and learned. I have also seen groups where they divided up the work or one person did everything. This is where individual constructivism might be a good alternative. In this method, the student is forced to learn all parts of the task and gather enough knowledge to finish on their own. However, this also limits the amount of knowledge they can gain because they don’t have others to share with them.

I also can see why we would want to bring our students cognition into disequilibrium. When I am sure I am right about something and someone tells me I am wrong, I hurry to go research the topic and learn what the correct answer is. If I was indeed wrong, I now have the correct information I need and will probably never forget it. By sending our students into disequilibrium, they too will want to find the knowledge they need to get back into equilibrium and this will cause them to go find new information and learn.

I also think that the zone of proximal development is a very important concept for teachers to know about. We want our students to be able to complete tasks that push and stretch them but that they are also able to complete within reason. We need to be able to scaffold learning for our students so that it is at just the right level for them to learn and progress.

IPT 301 Week 7

1. I can’t remember that much about cooperative learning in elementary school, although I am sure we did it. I have seen cooperative learning in schools I have worked at schools that have used a lot of this type of learning in their centers. In college, I have experienced a great deal of cooperative learning. I have many classes where a lot of our projects are based on these methods; we often have to make presentations or lessons as a group.

2. I think that cooperative learning has a place in the classroom just like any other method. For certain subjects, such as science, where an experiment needs to be done and discussed as a group, cooperative learning would promote learning because the students could all input their strengths and they could get a variety of input in the discussion.

3. Reciprocal questioning: method of reinforcing new concepts, information, or procedures that students have learned in class, encourages structured conversations among students.

Instructional Conversation: assumes that teaching involves conversation, the students have something important to say and their input is valued, is between the teacher and students.

4. Ability grouping is good for math and reading because it is much easier to taylor instruction to the heterogeneous group. This type of grouping is also better for the higher achieving students to give them some enrichment rather than having them work on things that they have already mastered.

Mixed grouping would be appropriate for activities where you want groups of different ability levels. This way, you can get different input from people with different interests and levels. The lower kids will benefit from having the help of the higher levels and the higher kids can help teach the lower kids.

Week 6 PLE

These are the google earth tours that I watched:

Rebecca Ferguson's

Sarah Peterson's

Keri Wooten's

I think that all of these would be really great learning activities for students. However, I also recognize the amount of time that it took me to make my google earth tour and I just don't know how practical it would be for me to make very many of these for my class. Maybe it would be easier once you have done it a few times and really have the hang of all the tools available. Also, I sometimes had a hard time viewing all the parts of the tours and knowing everything I needed to access to get the full effect of the tour and so we would probably have to walk younger children through a lot of the tour. I do however agree that these are all great instructional activities that the kids could really be engaged in and learn from.

Google Earth Tour

Here is a tour of Egypt.

IPT 301 Week 6

1. In school: Our teacher would hold up a big yellow hand and tell us to be quiet. After a little while, the hand automatically elicited the response of silence. Outside of school: We would set the table before it was time for dinner but dinner always followed shortly thereafter. Dinner always brought everyone into the kitchen but we all learned to associate the set table with dinner and we would all head to the kitchen.
2. As an elementary school child, I was very shy and feared punishment. Therefore, I was a very cooperative child and avoiding punishment was reinforcement enough for my good behavior. However, things at home were a little different and I needed more reinforcements. I used to get a piece of candy every time I practiced the piano for a half an hour. This usually worked and I wanted to practice the piano so I could get a piece of candy but if there was no reward, I had no desire whatsoever to practice.
3. I could use reinforcement schedules in the classroom for almost any behavior. For example, if I want students to learn the behavior of not talking during the lesson, I would positively reinforce the students who were being quiet at random intervals by giving positive praise to the students who were. I could also do something like a marble jar where I added a marble each time the class was being quiet and when the jar was full they would get a party.
4. Behaviorism could be considered to contradict the gospel perspective of agency because it is conditioning the students to do what you want them to do and what you feel is the right thing to do regardless of what the students actually want to do. However, I also think that behaviorism can include elements of agency. When children are misbehaving, give them choices: say you have a child that doesn’t want to complete their work in class, let them choose if they want to complete their work right now or if they want to complete it on the bench at recess time. I don’t think that behaviorism completely removes some ones agency, they are simply choosing their behavior based on the consequences they would rather experience which is basically what we are doing in the gospel. We want to gain the Celestial Kingdom, be blessed, and feel good so we choose to do what is right.

Location	Activity Description	Google Earth Content
1. Rosetta, Egypt	Hieroglyphics activity: students will learn about hieroglyphics and use a chart to figure out how to write their names
2. Valley of the Kings	Pharaohs: Choose one Pharaoh from http://www.kingtutone.com/pharaohs/ and read about it and prepare to share something about this Pharaoh with the class	Tour of the Valley of the Kings
Sphinx, Egypt The Great Sphinx of Giza	Pyramids: the students will learn about the ancient pyramids and then read about a write a description of a parallel structure of another civilization	Layer: 3-D Buildings
Damietta, Egypt Suez Canal Egypt	The River Nile	Layer: Borders and Labels

My tour goes with the UEN standards for 6th grade Social Studies standard 1. This standard includes learning about ancient civilizations.

I chose to do a virtual tour on this topic because I find it very interesting myself. I have always wanted to visit Egypt and I think that the kids would really like it too. There are so many interesting things to see and learn about there! A virtual tour would be great compared to other instructional approaches because the students would get excited about pretending that they were there and getting to see the real life images of Egypt. Another idea I could add to this section would be an Egypt day where the students would be able to dress up as Egyptians and share something they had learned with the class. We did this in my 6th grade class and I still remember how exciting it was.

IPT 301 Week 5

1. Plan for attention: This stated that it is necessary to plan lessons with the students’ developmental levels in mind. We need to use a variety of teaching strategies and engage the students’ curiosity. This will be useful to me in my teaching because I will be more aware of the things that will gain the attention of my class and I will use techniques that will help initially attain and hold the attention of the class.

Relevance: Some teachers present facts and formulas without giving sufficient attention to teaching the students when that information is useful and relevant. This is useful to me in teaching because I will be sure to tell my students why the information they are learning is relevant and when they can use it in their lives. When students know that information is useful or can see it in a real world situation, they are more likely to pay attention and remember the information.

2. Low-road transfer: Spontaneous, automatic transfer of highly practiced skills with little need for reflective thinking. One example of this would be running, this is a skill that we can do automatically and can do while completing other tasks such as dribbling a basketball or talking to a friend. Another example would be typing on the computer, we can use this skill to take notes while we read a textbook or are dictated something to write.

High-road transfer: an individual purposely and consciously applies information learned in one situation to a different situation. An example of this could be that someone gets lost driving and knows that they need to go north and the mountains are to the north so they drive that direction knowing that they are going towards their destination. Another example would be if someone fixed an electronic and then they used the skills they remembered from fixing that to fix their television later.

3. I use low-road transfer everyday in that I can use my listening, reading, and writing skills all at the same time while listening to a lecture, reading slides, and taking notes. However, I also use a lot of high-road transfer as we learn theories and I have to consciously apply them to different instructional strategies we discuss.

4. I have used a lot of algorithms in math classes to solve problems. In algebra, we always had a certain algorithm we would follow to get the answer we were looking for. Also, in physics, we had many formulas and we would find the one that we needed for the problem we needed to solve and simply plug our data into this algorithm,

I have used heuristics often in classes like science where I solved a problem and then had to describe the answer based on analyzing the data we had found.