Week 10 Personal and Moral Development

One thing that I thought that was interesting was how in module 5 it talks about family context. They mention how at first parents start out as external authority figures, they lay down the consequences for behavior but how eventually, the child adopts the norms set down by their parents as their own moral code. It was always interesting for me when I was in school, to see how people acted in class, or towards authority and then to see their parents later on. Generally, the child and the parent exhibited the same behavior. Some people are afraid to become their parents and for good reason according to what I read. You generally adopt your parents moral code.
But, even if the family for some does not provide the moral base that helps them become productive members of society, there are other influences that can be had. School is one of them. Teachers can help provide their students with some of that by helping students understand why rules exist and help them to develop that moral code. They can help them learn that every choice has a consequence, both good and bad. They also can help them develop empathy, respect and other such pro social behaviors. After the parents, peers and school have the most impact on a child's moral development.
As a kid, I didn't always recognize the influence that my peers had on me but, after my parents I think they helped influence me the most, and what I have become. some of what I gained was good and some not so good. You really are very influenced by those around you, for good and bad.

Week 9 Motivation

1) I think most of the students are extrinsically motivated. many of them don't do what they should unless there is something in it for them or they are going to get praised for it. There are a few that do what they should and complete assignments they were given or go above and beyond because they want t but there are very few of them.
2) There are times I think, when intrinsic motivation becomes extrinsic when a teacher adds a reward, then all of a sudden something that was and should be common place behavior needs some sort of motivation to be accomplished. There were things to me that seemed like things that the students should naturally be able to do on there own butt because of their life situations they still needed the extrinsic to help them to make right choices. On the other hand it was neat to see when some students transferred from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic...I mean to say there were some kids that made the good choices on their own because they knew it was the right thing to do. One little girl made friends with another little girl that had no friends even though it was unpopular. She felt better and gained a friend.
3) I am not sure how to explain why but I think that in many ways the best is not achieved until there is a reason to go do it. There are exceptions but I think that necessity is the mother of invention and reward can be a great motivator for young children that see praise or extrinsic rewards as a necessity.
4) On classroom level my teacher had "fun time." When the class performed well they would riecieve a letter and when they spelled out fun time they would recieve 15 extra minutes of something. They would roll a dice and what it landed on they would get to do, like art or recess, or reading. On a student level she would give out "O Wows." I liked this because it focused on the good students and what they were doing right and gave them a reward for it because many times those that are being bad are the ones that recieve all of the attention and those that are on task recieve no attenttion. The problem this might cause is that the students begin to look at their good behavior as conditional, "am I going to get an 'O Wow'?"
5) I think there are a number of things mixed together that make up my personal theory but I think I have seen more of the behaviorist side while in the classroom. There is a lot of conditioning that is done in the classroom and it starts I think, with behaviorism. I think that they should get to a point where they are self motivated but there is training that has to happen first and that is why I am more a behaviorist. I am only speaking from my experience, not from personal belief. What I found was that things don't always work out how we think they should.

Week 8 Cognitive Development and Language

I do agree with most of what Piaget and Vygotsky said about cognitive development. I like that Piaget defines them and that there are different stages that we all go through. You don't jump over them during your development, and I think that in general they work as a good developmental definition. I do think, however, that they are not as cut and dry as he has them laid out. I think that there is more meshing of the stages. Not everyone developes at the same rate.

As far as Vygotsky is concerned I agree alot with the developmental process that we go through in the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). I think alot of the development that we go through is scafolded my others. There is a certain amount that we can learn on our own before we need help. Then, if we have help or are able to learn from someone at about our same developmental level we can learn more still, but we still hit a stopping point. Then, if we recieve help from an expert we learn even more than we were capable of doing alone or even with a peer. As we learn more the cycle repeats as we move up. We then take our new information and start again.

I think the part of most interest to me was on language and cognitive development. I am not sure I agree that language is needed for conscious thought. We assume that an infant is not conscious of its thoughts but no one has ever been able to ask an infant what it is thinking. That is along the same lines as, "I think, therefore I am." Children at a young age do exhibit some problem solving skills even though they have no vocabulary, it does, I believe require conscious thought in order to problem solve. What about children that are born deaf? If that is discovered later in their developmental process, do they just not think, or rather, do they just not have conscious thought until words are supplied? Just because you cannot express your thoughts does not mean you don't have them and that you are not aware of yourself.

Looking at the role that play takes in a child's development, I think that it is interesting to note that much of their pretend has to do with adult roles. There are so many adults that wish they were kids again and so many kids pretending to be adults. If we knew when we were children what it felt like to be an adult that wanted their childhood back then maybe we would engage in different types of play. But as it is, I do agree that play is important in child development. The child is able, according to Vygotsky, to move up in the ZPD by taking on a new unfamiliar role.

Week 7 Social Constructivism

1) As far as cooperative learning in elementary school, I remember doing lots of group projects and team activities. I don't remember too many of the actual activities at this level. The only one that was really memorable was 5th grade and we dissected owl pellets. We were in groups of 3 or 4 and we used gloves and tweezers to pull it apart. We later identified the bones that we found. It was disgusting but neat. There was a lot of discussion when we got down to identifying what we found. At the college level I have done similar activities to the one from 5th grade. I have participated in group projects of all kinds. My favorite was one where we all read a book, it was "Cirque Du Freak," the class was a juvenile lit class, during the reading of the book we did a book group. This was a great experience because we examined the book from many different perspectives. There were things that I hadn't noticed that they others had and that made the book that much more enjoyable.

2) I think that cooperative learning does have its place in the classroom. There is a time for a lecture but there is also a time for peer discussion. There are things that can be learned more effectively in a group of peers than from a teacher. Generally a teacher only offers one point of view, theirs, and in group, or cooperative learning a child shares their point of view in solving the problem and gets the view of others in the group. Each child can help the others with scaffolding their learning. A teacher is necessary but cooperative learning and problem solving is something that children will be doing for the rest of their lives so the might as well learn it well.

3) Both reciprocal questioning and instructional conversation get the students thinking outside of their usual box. It gets them thinking about questions and asking questions that they usually would not ask. They are both more student centered. The teacher acts as a guide in both, making sure they do not deviate too much from the topic being discussed. In reciprocal questioning, the teacher provides the students with a basic skeleton of the kinds of questions they want the students to be asking and the students create there own questions using the stems given. They then get into groups and ask and answer each other's questions and discuss them. In instructional conversation the teacher maps out how they want the conversation to go and then begins to guide the students in asking and answering questions together. In both, the teacher must take some time to give some background knowledge for the discussion.

4) Grouping according to ability is something that can be good as well as bad, like the book said. Many times I have heard of ability grouping in elementary schools but mainly in reading. I think this is good because the students feel like it is easier to read if they are not the only one reading at a certain level. But I think that at the same time there are things to be learned in mixed groups. Math was one subject where mixed groups would work out well I think. They can get help not only from the teacher but from other students that may be able to help more redily than the teacher in certain situations. I am not saying that they should copy what the other students are doing but group projects can help everyone to learn together. For reading mixed-grouping would work well if a readers theater was being done.

Teaching Reflection

Jill and I taught a less on on problem solving. One thing that we did was try to involve the whole class and give them hands on experience in problem solving and in specifically different methods of problem solving that we were teaching. This is from the principal that an engaged class will learn more during a lesson. We also used class discussion as a way of trying to assess the learning do but also help each person to make things stick better and learn from each other. This is from the principle that information applied is more memorable. When a person makes something they learn their own, they are able to discuss, and in this class with Daren on the sidelines, debate what has been learned. It made the lesson a bit more difficult but more interesting and memorable. It would have been even more memorable if we could have been better prepared for the questions that he brought up. Also, people learn better when the learning comes from multiple source. We can only learn so much by ourselves, we are able to learn more by discussing our findings with our peers and then we are able to learn more still by learning from an expert or a teacher and then the cycle starts again.

I think that our lesson would have been stronger if we would have had a better understanding of the material we were teaching. I know that I personally was still a bit iffy on some of the definitions but I figured that no one was going to ask any questions like the ones that Daren asked so I didn't worry about having it solid. I will never make that assumption again. I think that we also could have practiced our lesson some more before presenting it because it was a bit bumpy. That was definitely a weakness that could have been a strength if we had practiced more. That is something that I would change. Something that I liked was the ideas behind the activities but I think that the instructions given to at least one of the groups were a bit confusing. I would probably give better instructions the next time. We could have explained that each group was to read their instructions before beginning. That was something that I assumed they would do but they did not. So, for next time I will want to plan for all possibilities and not assume that a class knows what I am thinking because that just made things difficult for them.

Week 6 Behaviorism

1) I think contiguity learning, for me, outside of school would have to be the ice cream man. Not that I ever got any ice cream but I learned that when I heard the song the Entertainer that the ice cream man was coming. That was the song that the ice cream truck played in my neighborhood. When I thing of stimulus response inside of school I think of my teacher raising his hand or standing silent in the center of the room. These were two events that motivated a response and for both the response was silence and attention. Attention getters are used in various forms by various people and like most things take some training but after it has been learned once it can be generalized for more than one teacher. For one teacher silence might come by turning the lights on and off, for another by raising their hand but once it is learned once it can be generalized.

2) One effective reinforcement that I remember as a child was losing privileges when I got in trouble. Especially the privilege of going to my friend's house. TV was a loss too but it was not as big for me as a child than not getting to go play was. I generally did not repeat an offense too soon because I didn't want to stay in the house the rest of my life. In school I remember the teachers giving praise a lot. And if one person got attention everyone wanted it and that generally made everyone work hard so that they could get praised as well.

3) One thing that I have heard a lot in class from more than one teacher is the importance of conditioning your students or "training the troops." A reinforcement schedule helps to do that. In using one you are able to teach acceptable and unacceptable behavior and the consequences of each choice. Soon, the students learn that with ever choice comes a consequence whether it is good or bad depends on their choice, and if your schedule is effective then the students learn to make good choices and your classroom runs more smoothly.

4) When I think of gospel principals and behaviorism I think of the Young Women's theme and choice and accountability. Learning that you are accountable for your actions or choices, both good and bad. But, we all have our agency. We all have the ability to chose which we are going to do. We cannot chose the consequences but we can chose the actions we take that leads to them and the action we take depends on how we use our agency. I think that there are certain connections between them but I also think that there is something more to agency than just choice and consequences and conditioned response. If that where the way that we learned everything we would be nothing more than animals. Animals can learn and adapt too but there is more to the choices that we make in life than just conditioned responses. people go against their conditioning all the time. I think in some ways it is an argument of natural vs spiritual man.

Week 5 Cognition

1) The two things that I think would be the most helpful in teaching are mnemonic devices and attention getters. When I was a kid it was hard to memorize things sometimes but when given a way to memorize it it seemed to stick better. Like ROY G BIV. That was a great way to remember colors of the rainbow. Another one of my favorites was one I learned in music class, FACE for the space notes and Evert Good Boy Does Fine for the line notes. Those helped me to always remember what they were. It works the same way for many people. once they are given something to help them remember it sticks. Attention getters are also a good way to make sure the child stays with you during a lesson. It is good at the beginning of the lesson but during it the lesson must still be able to grab a child's attention or it will not stick.

2) Low road transfer is the transfer of highly practiced skills with little or no need for reflection. An example of this would be like driving a car. you don't have to be familiar with an area to drive through it. You know that when you see a stop sign you break and that a speed limit sign tells you how fast you should be going. It becomes almost like muscle memory. Another example would be a practiced typist. Someone that knows the keyboard well and does not have to OK at it in order to type out a sentence. (unlike me)
High road transfer is the purposeful use or application of knowledge, skills, principles or strategy learned in one situation to a completely different situation. This would be like writing letters for the first time. Many children know the alphabet but transferring that to pencil requires effort. So writing letters for the first time can take time. Another example would be teaching in a second language. Many people speak a second language here in Utah but don't have the required vocabulary to speak outside of social situations. This would require a lot more adaption and effort.

3) At a younger age when everything is new I think that it would be more high road transfer because the children have very little experience in anything. Much of what they do is based off of other tasks that they have previously learned to do. But I think as they get older it changes from high to low road thinking because they move on from learning the basics to higher levels of study that use the basics to support them, like reading a book for comprehension

4) Math is where I have used algorithms the most. That is a place where they are really needed too. I have used heuristics in projects. It was a way for me to break down my goal into smaller parts that were more achievable and it allowed me to get things done.