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TOM SJennifer
Driscoll Chapter 1
Learning is change. If we don't change, we haven't learned anything. If we have learned something then we have changed in some way either cognitively or behaviorally. Learning does come through experiences, which is one of the most effective ways to learn something. I see that with my students every day. My teaching becomes much more effective if they are experiencing the learning first hand. By delving deeply into the books in front of them, learning how to question themselves and the author they are picking up skills that would have been more difficult to achieve by just using paper and pencil.
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In my line of work I also agreed that not all knowledge is absolute. When I am working on higher level thinking skills with my struggling students they each may get to the answer in a different manor, or pick out different examples in the story to add to our discussion. There are times that there is no wrong answer when you are teaching students to express themselves and learn how to find meaning in what they are learning.
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I felt drawn to Ebbinghaus for several reasons. I don’t agree with all that he stated, but drew many connections to the work I do. Exposing students to material many times over the course of a class or year does make the information more secure. It is part of how many curriculums are organized today. The spiraling method allows teachers to touch on areas knowing that the children will not master the objective the first time. Teachers can feel comfortable doing this because that same information will be taught several more times at different points in the year. As a teacher it was not easy to move on when I saw some students did not fully understand but as I continued to teach I saw the value in the spiraling.
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I found his use of nonsense words to be interesting. We use those today with the DIBELS program. Young students are tested on one-syllable nonsense words. That program uses it as a reading test to see how well students approach unknown words and how likely they are to use correct strategies and rules.
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The Gesalt School discussed the idea that knowledge does come from more than just experiences. I liked the explanation of insight and problem solving. My goal as a teacher is to have my students become insightful learners. I see examples often when after trial and error, or feeling discouraged because they do not understand the student will get the look in their eye, as they say the light bulb goes off, and they “get it”. That is very true with children. They do not understand something and all of a sudden something connects and things fall into place for them. Some of that learning is developmental, they learn it when they are developmentally ready but other times it is through the hard work of the student and the dedication of the teacher to find the right style of learning to fit that student.
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It has been a long time since I have been in school- and like it said the longer you go between learning the harder it is to remember! Hopefully that will not be the case for me!
Mayer Chapter 1
The goal of teaching is promote learning, but not just any learning, meaningful learning. Meaningful learning came up several times in this chapter and I think that is crucial. Learning must be meaningful. According to Mayer (2008) meaningful learning happens when “the learner engages in active cognitive processing that leads to transfer” (p. 25).
I too am focused on the learner-centered approach in my teaching philosophy. Each one of my students is different and may take on the information in a slightly different way, it is my job to not fit them into my style of teaching but mold my teaching around their needs and they ways in which they learn best. This is much more difficult with the pressure from the state to raise tests scores, but is still my goal.
Each of the three approached to research on learning does have something to offer. I tend to agree with Mayer who said an issue with the behaviorist approach is that it does not provide understanding of the why or the how. The why and the how give a much deeper understanding then just a measure of student outcomes. Learning is knowledge construction and I am here to guide the student through discussions and their exploration of texts. While for some areas of education the “drill and kill” practice sheets are important to gauge understanding and mastery they should never be used as the only method of learning. Students have to be able to show they have learned the information, but it is also important that they can apply that knowledge to a separate and new situation.
Working memory is something I hear about quite a bit in my position. We meet weekly to discuss struggling students as a team of teachers and when a teacher bring a child to the group that they are worried about the topic consistently turns to their low working memory. I do not know why in recent years we have been seeing this in so many children. Does it have to do with the amount of screen time? The lack of academic support at home? All of the processed food they are eating each day? I truly do not know, but I know that it is a growing problem in our school. When students have trouble with their working memory it cannot be encoded into long term memory and learning becomes stagnate.
Students need to be able to use all the processes in order to truly have meaningful learning. They need to select the important pieces of information, organize it an a way that makes sense and integrate it into other learning or experiences that they have had prior, their schema. Making these connections is sometimes difficult, especially for younger students but with practice and discussions they can begin to see these connections with their past learning and experiences on a deeper level.
Problem-solving transfer is the ability to use what you have learned to help you solve a new problem. You can see this in every area of education from math, to reading, to science. Being able to apply prior learning is crucial to advance new learning.
I wasn’t sure what to think about the differences and between specific and general transfer. Thorndike’s theory is that general skills do not transfer to new tasks and that the skills needed to be connected in some way. As reading teachers we hear conflicting reports about the connection between crawling and reading. When a child crawls they are beginning to learn how to allow their brain to control their cognitive processes which effect comprehension and reading. They are also learning to have the right and left side of their brains working together, “crossing the midline” which is crucial in learning to read. Now of course that does not mean that if a child walks before they crawl, or skips crawling all together that they will develop issues as they begin school, but connections have been found. What kind of transfer is that? Wouldn’t that be general? I don’t know.
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Evidence-based practice is instruction that is guided by research and not just feelings or opinions. Our Literacy Coach is talking often about the use of “best practices” in our teaching and what that means. When a teachers says they feel they have found a better way she may ask them to defend themselves with a “How do you know?” “Where is your evidence?” She is not trying to be mean or put any one down but she truly wants what is best for the students and if a teacher bring data showing their method is working that is all she is looking for. She just wants teachers to be conscious of the results they are seeing and allow themselves to accept when something isn’t working and having the willingness to change.
DIBELS. https://dibels.uoregon.edu
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Mayer, R. E. (2008). Learning and instruction (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Here I need first comment about what you read it above
Mayer Reflection 2
When looking to write my second reflection from the Mayer text I found it difficult to choose between Fluency and Comprehension because I find that they are so interconnected. If you do not have good fluency, you cannot have good comprehension. If a student spends a great deal of time decoding words in a passage or story they will lose the meaning behind the text. By the time they have reached the end of a page they may forget what they have read at the beginning of that page. I have spent the past few years working with our most struggling readers and I found so much of what I read to ring true with what I see on a daily basis. I know it is true for myself as well. When I am reading new text that may be complicated I have to read the material more than once and there are times where I have finished a paragraph or page and thought to myself, “I have no idea what I just read”. That is decoding not reading fluently with comprehension.
There is controversy in education about how much focus should be placed on isolated phonemic awareness instruction, and I can understand why. There are students who arrive in the 2nd grade who still have not secured their basic letter sounds, let alone of the different vowel patters, diagraphs, and other phonemes that comprise the English language. Without that basic knowledge reading becomes much more difficult.
Many schools have gotten away from isolated lessons and focused instruction on a whole language approach where phonics is integrated into the daily reading lessons or in small group leveled reading setting. Some students pick up on the sounds and strategies used in decoding quickly and do not need stand alone lessons, while some students struggle with many aspects of reading and need that extra support as they are learning what to do when they come upon unfamiliar words. There needs to be some explicit phonemic instruction, and there is evidence to support that. Many basal texts now have a combination of whole word and phonics. This balanced approach is in my opinion much more meaningful. As an interventionist I liked seeing the data supporting systematic phonics skills can improve the decoding of struggling students. While I do not solely rely on phonics, it does play a role in my lessons. We follow the program called Words Their Way by Donald Bear, Marcia Invernizzi, Shane Templeton, and Francine Johnston. It is a developmental hands-on word study program that has been shown to be very successful.
The book also discussed the difference between the phonics and whole word approach. I am a proponent of phonemic awareness. If students learn the different rules and sounds they can apply what they know when they get stuck on a word. While no rule fits all words gives students a place to start. You then must teach them other strategies (checking for meaning, picture clues, context clues, rereading, etc.) when simple decoding does not suffice. There are definitely sight words that all students must know. Dolch is a word list commonly used in schools that presents words by grade level that are most used in reading and writing. Some of these words follow phonological rules, others do not and they just need to be memorized.
I found it so interesting to read that much of what I have been trained in has its foundations far earlier than I realized. We may call it something different, but at its core it is the same. The Mayer (2008) shared a strategy called “vowel variation” (p. 56) which is similar to the Café Model’s (2009) “flip the sound” (p. 174) where a student tries both a long vowel and short vowel sound to determine which makes sense. Once students are familiar comfortable with the many strategies used in decoding the hope is that they will use them subconsciously as they are reading and it will become second nature.
One method discussed was the method of repeated readings. It says that with repeated readings a student will become more fluent in the decoding of a passage. I have used this and found it to be quite effective. I have even gone so far as to have the students tape themselves reading the passage. They then listen to themselves as they are following along. They mark where they catch themselves making a mistake. When done, they read the passage again. We repeat the process several times, reading the same passage and they love being able to hear the improvement in the rate and accuracy, which are both key pieces of fluency. Even if you do not take it that far, teachers are always telling students to read and reread. That rereading not only helps them gain confidence but it builds fluency and once fluency is strong comprehension follows. Again, the goal being that as a student gains confidence this will all be done without them thinking about it.
You can tell a great deal about a student by listening to them attempt to decode a passage. If they read the word blue instead of black you know they are seeing the beginning sound but not the middle or end. If they say picture for photograph they are likely using a visual cue that allows them to make a connection to the story an attempt at the word. When doing this type of diagnostic assessment you can determine where there is a gap in knowledge and work with the student to fill in that gap.
The three cognitive processes that are necessary for reading are phonological awareness (recognizing units of sound), decoding (knowing what sounds go with what letters), and decoding fluently (reading with good rate and expression). Without meaning though, this is not reading. Students with a great deal of prior knowledge have more experiences to draw from and can more easily gain meaning from the words being read. They have a larger, richer vocabulary and have been exposed to many words that other students may not have access to. This gives them a head start with reading as compared with a child with little schema to connect to a story. Children need to be exposed to as much literature as possible, as many words as possible both at home and at school. This will help build their vocabulary, strengthen the background knowledge they have and allow them to become stronger more confident readers.
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Driscoll Reflection 2
Skinner believed that behavior could be understood by cues in the environment. Consequences make the behavior more or less likely to occur. Drisccoll (2005) mentioned that Skinner believed that you do not need to know what is going on inside of the learner to determine how its antecedents and consequences govern behavior (p. 33). I am not sure I agree with this completely. I do think that behavior can be connected to what is happening in the mind of the learner and by understand the person, while you may not be able to explain every behavior, it may give you insight into why the behaviors are taking place.
So many of these behavior management techniques I have used either purposefully or without thinking in my teaching. I had never taken the time to really think about the similarities or differences between them so I found this to be quite interesting. They were separated into a way that made sense to me and has me thinking more carefully about how I construct behavior plans or set behavior goals for students.
When trying to teach new behaviors setting small achievable goals are important. If you expect too much too quickly the student could get discouraged and give up. I found shaping and chaining to be similar. Each example had someone starting with a smaller task and building on that task to reach a larger goal. Chaining was teaching more complex skills but at its core it was the same.
When reading about the different schedules of reinforcement, I find that it depends on the student, the situation, and the behavior you are reinforcing. We have what are called “pillar cards” that are given to students when they show good character. There are six pillars of character (respect, fairness, caring, trustworthiness, citizenship, responsibility). When a child has a collected all six they are “knighted” by our principal in a ceremony before school (our mascot is the Knight). This has to be a variable ratio and interval. You want students to act with good character all of the time and not to expect a card for doing behavior that is expected. Students know not to come up to an adult and say, “Did you see me open the door for that student? Can I have a pillar card for that?” They do not know when a teacher will hand a card and that makes them try their best at all times because every one wants to be knighted. Other students need that consistent reinforcement to maintain good behavior. I had one student who had a 15-minute behavior plan. It was very difficult as the classroom teacher but this student could only handle 15-minute intervals of expected on task behavior. We gradually increased that time but it had to be fixed in order for it to be effective.
When creating behavior plans it is important to start by selecting a few of the most important behaviors you would like changed or improved. Setting goals for the students that are achievable but not too easy is also key. Finding out what is important to a child can help when determining reinforcers. Making it meaningful to them will make it more successful. The situation itself can also determine what reinforcers are used. There needs to be a plan in place to adjust the plan if the goals have been reached, it has become to easy or to difficult. I had one student who had many different behavior plans with many different teachers through their schooling. I created a very tough contract. For the first few weeks it was not working at all. Then one day this student said to me, “So my behavior plan doesn’t seem to be working, don’t you think it is time you changed it?” It was then I realized they were purposefully failing in the hopes I would create a new plan. That is what other teachers had done out of frustration in the past I did not change the plan and they resigned themselves to this and actually became quite successful. It was an eye opening experiences for me in my teaching and in the creation of behavior plans.
Of course the goal is to have students become intrinsically motivated to behave appropriately, and many are. These tools though are very useful when you are struggling to help a child reach their potential.
Here I need 2ed comment about what you read it above
Boushey, Gail. and Moser, Joan. (2009) The Cafe Book: Engaging all Students in Daily Literary Assessmentand Instruction. Portland, Maine. Stenhouse.
Dolch sight words. http://www.dolchsightwords.org/dolch_word_list.php
Driscoll, M. P. (2005). Psychology of learning for instruction (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
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Mayer, R. E. (2008). Learning and instruction (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
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