Constructivism

When teaching conventions of Standard American English and why it is used academically in a constructivist way, I would engage the class by speaking in a dialect different than my own. Maybe I'll speak with a southern accent and then switch to a New England accent (if I can). Once the students are engaged and wondering why I am speaking differently, the students will explore through a short webquest done in groups of 4. The students will explain to the class what they found and why they came up with that explanation. To elaborate students would choose something specific that they learned from the webquest to research farther. They would write a paper and do a short presentation about their findings. To conclude learning about why Standard English is the one used in academics, I would have the students evaluate what the lesson means to them in a pair and share, then write their self-evaluations in a minute paper.

Information Processing

When teaching students how to evaluate a speech using the information processing model, I will get my students attention by singing the first lines of the Beatles song "Come together, right now" and the students will sing "Over me." Once I have their attention, I will have them activate prior knowledge by recalling a speech they have heard and thinking about what they remember most about it. Then as a class we will discuss important parts of speeches including point of view, reasoning, rhetoric, and evidence. We will repeat a chant of those four elements of speeches and at the same time I will show pictures relating to each element. The chant with the pictures is dual-coding the information that they need to know. The encode into the long term memory we will watch and evaluate a speech that is relevant to their lives and then the students will have to write and deliver their own speech using the four elements we learned. This will probably be a week long unit rather than just a single lesson.

Motivation

I will help students overcome learned helplessness by helping them develop learned optimism. I can help the students learn that through self-regulation and self-instruction they can become successful in the future. I will focus and model an incremental view of ability, that when we're not good at something we can change and improve over time. 

Another important way I will help students overcome Iearned helplessness is to meet as many of the needs on Maslow's hierarchy of needs as possible. I can make my classroom safe, help my students feel like they belong and they are loved. I will praise my students' successes so that their need for esteem will be filled. I will fill their needs for cognitive, aesthetic, and self-actualization with the content of my lessons.

Review 2

1. What are you doing well? I am doing the study guides and reading well.
2. What are you not doing well? The blogs, obviously. I think about them but don't get around to writing them.
3. Are you making sufficient progress on your goals? I am definitely learning how to connect with teens better. The field experience was a great way to do that. Through working on my assessment inventory I am getting a lot of good ideas for assessment in my future class. I have become a more efficient learner and I hope I'll be a good teacher but I don't know yet.
4. List specific things you need to change in order to meet your goals. I need to stick to my schedule more and stop getting distracted by the beautiful summer days outside. Using the 20 minutes then a break rule will give me a little bit of both worlds and I won't fall farther behind.
5. How is your motivation? Are you focusing on mastery or performance goals? Does anything need to change? My motivation is good. Even with distractions I really like this class and want to learn the material so that I can be a good teacher.
6. How is your field experience going? Name at least one take-away from your field experience to this point. Field experience is done, just working on the journal. One take away is that none of the theories that we've learned cover all the experiences in the classroom and a combination of theories makes the most sense with the evidence I've seen during the field experience.
7. What can I (Dr. Cox) do to improve your learning in this course? You're doing great. I have learned so much in this class and I feel like it's really applicable.

Identity

To support my students' identity development, I will: 

• Read literature with diverse characters and authors and make sure to point out different career choices.
• Invite guest speakers who relate the the theme of the literature we are reading to talk about their professions.
• Encourage them to talk to school counselors and invite the counselors into my classroom on a regular basis so the students will be familiar with them.
• Encourage service projects at organizations that students have interest in. For example, if a student is considering becoming a veterinarian  I would encourage him or her to volunteer at the humane society or animal shelter.
• Notice and discuss trends and fads that my students are following.
• Have clear consequences for undesirable behavior.
• Give students examples of what I expect from them by showing them previous students' work that has been done well.
• Criticize undesirable behaviors and never criticize the person who does that behavior.

(most of these ideas are from pg. 106 in Educational Psychology by Anita Woolfolk)

Differentiation

When teaching literature I want to teach based on themes rather than teaching specific texts. To differentiate for readiness I will have literature circles (groups) where students will be reading the same theme but different texts based on their own reading level. For example, if we are talking about the American dream, some students could read Of Mice and Men, others could read The Great Gatsby and others could read The Catcher in the Rye. Students could even suggest their own books based on the theme which would also differentiate for profile/affect. By using groups to differentiate for readiness in reading, each student will grasp the overall concept and theme but at an appropriate level for own skills.

Piaget in my Classroom

To teach analysis of a story at a concrete level I would find a story that the students could relate directly to. The story would have a teenage protagonist dealing with a problem with friends. The students would understand the analysis of the story because it would be just like something that they have dealt with in their own lives. To create disequilibrium I would make sure the story had the protagonist do something different than is typical for my students to do. The students would at first assimilate the information about what the character in the story is doing because it is the same as what they would do. After the disequilibrium of the character doing something that my students probably wouldn't do, I will have them act out the situation for themselves to help them accommodate.

To add to the formal level I would present different hypothetical situations and have them hypothesize how to solve the imaginary problem.