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Information Processing Theory

Different age groups of students come with different challenges. Working with the preschool-aged students, I have always had the challenge of making sure that I can capture their attention, read my audience, maintain their attention during an activity, and make sure not to expect them to attend to an activity for longer than they are developmentally able to attend. Schunk (2016) says, “Differences in the ability to control attention are associated with student age, hyperactivity, intelligence, and learning disability. Sustained attention is difficult for young children, as is attending to relevant rather than irrelevant information” (p. 175). When I began working with this age group, it was often times difficult to maintain the child’s attention to different tasks. I feel like I fell on my face for the first few months of my teaching career when working with preschool-aged students. During the year prior, I student taught in a kindergarten classroom. Even that experience couldn’t prepare me for needs of the students I was working with.

As a reflective teacher, I would try to figure out what the best way to design my lessons to maintain the attention of the majority or all of the class. “Teachers can promote student attention to relevant material through a design of classroom activities” (Schunk, 2016, p. 175). Once I was able to design lessons that were engaging to the students in my classroom, their attention to an activity began to increase. Schunk (2016) suggests that teachers can “vary their presentations, materials used, student activities, and personal qualities such as dress and mannerisms” (p. 176) as ways to maintain student attention.

One of the joys that I had as a classroom teacher of four-year old students was that many of them would come in as a blank slate. Yes, there were some students who had been in a day care setting and some of the students had parents that taught them a lot prior to attending school, but I was their first teacher. When I first began teaching, it was amazing to see how quickly a four-year old could learn different skills. “Transfer refers to knowledge being applied in new ways, in new situations, or in familiar situations with different content. Transfer also explains how prior learning affects subsequent learning” (Schunk, 2016, p. 226). Thinking of transfer and the literacy skills that I taught my students in my class, it is easier to understand how they were able to learn as new skills learned would build upon previous skills learned. We would typically start with letter recognition. While students learn the names of the letters, they were taught the sound that the letters make. Once they learned the sound, the student would then apply that knowledge and talk about different words that begin with the letters and sounds that they learned.

Within a biblical worldview, I think of transfer in the context of one’s relationship with God. That relationship continues to grow and build while one learns more about God and the importance of having a strong relationship. Philippians 4:6-7, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

References

Schunk, D.H. (2016). Learning theories: An educational perspective – With access (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.