Bpeffley's Blog

Random Reflection

bpeffley — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:33:39 +0000

Yesterday I was talking to a neighbor of mine who has a young girl in one of our local schools. She encountered a problem with one of her daughter’s assignments last week. At school she had an assignment where the students had a list of activities and they had to categorize the items in this list. The two categories were activities that a pilgrim boy would do and activities that a boy from today would do. The girl had points taken off of her paper because she put to of the items under the wrong category. She put the activities “plant corn” and “plow the fields” under the activities for today’s boy. The teacher wanted these items to be placed under the pilgrim boy category so the girl missed these to items. However, the reason the little girl put these two items under today’s boy is because her father is a farmer and he does these activities! Therefore, the little girl was basing her answers on her knowledge. I feel like the student didn’t take into consideration the individual students’ backgrounds and prior knowledge with this activity. Technically the girl was not wrong with her answers because boys in today’s world do still plant corn and plow the fields. If I were the teacher, I don’t believe I would have marked these items incorrect.

Educational Psychology: Response to Prompt #12

bpeffley — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 22:11:33 +0000

She displays respect for her students by using please and thank you when she speaks to them. In this way she is providing a positive model for students to also use respect when speaking to her or to their peers. She uses a lot of verbal praise and recognition with her students. She makes sure students are aware that she notices their good behavior and she also appreciates it. You can tell she cares about the students because she shows personal interest in her students which lets students know that she cares. She portrays that she believes in her students by telling them things like she believes in them and she knows they can do it. I feel like if students know she believes in them and she thinks they can be successful then they will strive to do their best and prove to her that they can do it.
I think the teacher has very reasonable expectations for her students’ behavior. She expects them to stay on task. They also need to raise their hands before they speak. This prevents them from just speaking out and interrupting her or the other students in the class. She also wants students to participate in the reading activity. It seems that she doesn’t just want students to sit and listen, but to also be active and add to the reading group. Students also need to sit quietly during the group and raise their hands if they want to talk.
I believe that she does create a sense of community. By having students work in groups this allows for positive social interaction between students. All students are active participants in the class which builds acceptance. The students know they are important members of the class and so are all of their peers. I love how if a student is not completely on the right track with maybe an answer to a question she doesn’t just tell them they’re wrong. Instead she gives them positive feedback before telling them the answer isn’t completely correct. I feel like this will make students more likely to participate because they won’t be afraid to give a wrong answer and be embarrassed in class.
I feel that the fact that students respond when the teacher asks a question proves that they feel psychologically safe in the class. This shows that they are not afraid of being incorrect and being embarrassed in the class. If the students were intimidated by the teacher I feel that they would have had more reservations about being active participants in the class. You can tell that the students are comfortable in the classroom and with the teacher. They know what is expected of them and they don’t go against these expectations. I think they respect the teacher and follow her guidelines for the class.

Educational Psychology: Response to Prompt #11

bpeffley — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:29:38 +0000

I think “Be nice, work hard.” is a great motto. I think it establishes a sort of guideline for expectations in the class. I think that the students should already know how to be nice and how to work hard so they should know when their behavior is not nice and when they aren’t working hard. In my behavior management class we have discussed developing classroom expectations. We were taught that if you make expectations to detailed and lengthy, it’s harder for students to follow and remember. I think this class motto is easy to understand and to remember.
I believe that classrooms aren’t necessarily based on fear, but it’s more of an individual feeling to some students. Many students do fear failure in school, but this isn’t because the classroom is based on fear it’s simply that the students fear being unsuccessful. However, I do believe there are some teachers that control their classroom by conditioning their students to fear them. This is a bad thing because if students fear a teacher then they will not be able to develop a good relationship with that teacher and research has shown that students perform better and progress academically if they have a positive relationship with their teacher. In the case of students who fear failure, this can be slightly positive because it motivates them to try their best in everything, but it has its negatives too because when these students do feel that they have failed at something they beat themselves up about it and it has a negative impact on their self-confidence.
It seems like this teacher has very high expectations for his students. I don’t really think all of these objectives are realistic. He doesn’t take into account that all students learn at different rates and are on different levels developmentally. I don’t see how he is accommodating the students who are slower learners or need more assistance when he developed his objectives. If he is leaving these students behind while he is trying so hard to reach his year-long goals, then these students are becoming frustrated and their learning is being inhibited.
I think his daily schedule includes a lot of activities the students should enjoy doing. He is not just expecting students to sit and complete worksheet after worksheet all day long. They get to be actively engaged and learning with hands-on experience which will be beneficial to the students. However, it seems that he has tried to pack a lot of activities into his schedule. Some students may need to work slower and he needs to allow students to set the pace of the class. If students need more time to complete an activity then he may have to cut out some of the activities from the schedule and allow for more time. If students can move through the activities as quickly as he wants and still gain the amount of knowledge that they need to from the experience than the schedule is fine. But I feel that students who work slower or need more time to absorb the information will be left behind in his class.
I agree more with the text book on the issue of homework. I do feel like homework gives students extra practice with a skill, but I don’t see that loading students down with homework everyday will help them. I prefer my students to practice while they are in my class so I am there to help them and guide them. I believe that giving students homework and expecting the homework to make them better at a skill so they will perform better in class is not correct. If a student is struggling with a concept, doing a worksheet on it at home that night isn’t going to make them master the concept.

Educational Psychology: Prompt #10

bpeffley — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:06:10 +0000

It’s clear that the students are interested in the lesson because they are participating in class. The students were volunteering answers and asking questions to make the lesson clearer. Students are trying to answer questions and complete the activity. You can tell that their interest grows when they are actually able to measure the room. I think that because this is more hands on and active, they are excited to take part. At one point the students are discussing what to do and the best approach to take so you can tell that they want to complete the activity well.
I believe that the students’ interest is situational. At this young age I doubt that any of the students are actually interested in how to successfully carpet a room. However, I think they viewed this activity as personal because they were measuring for carpet in their own classroom and they probably felt like they were helping the teacher. They would have not had the desire to measure their room if the teacher had not brought up the activity. The students were also probably excited to have the chance to socialize with their peers because this activity was a group effort.
The activity was probably interesting to students because they were able to be social and work in a group. The activity was also hands on and allowed them to be active and up, moving around instead of sitting at their desks. The fact that they were measuring for carpet in their own classroom also made the activity more realistic to them than just reading a word problem out of a book.
I think the teacher did a great job of engaging the children and keeping them interested in the concept. However, I remember that at that age my peers and I were competitive and enjoyed getting the chance to compete against one another. I think the teacher could have offered them a prize for the winning team to make them more determined.

Educational Psychology: Prompt #9

bpeffley — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:50:04 +0000

In the first video the teacher tests the student’s knowledge by asking them questions and encouraging them to think critically about the answers. She asks them questions related to the project they worked on in class that incorporated what they know about math, and then she is using the project they worked on to transition into a lesson on word problems. In the second video the teacher asks the students questions about the book they are reading for her class. She is trying to find out what they understand about the plot of the story and what they think about the characters in the book.
In the first video the students are basically getting the opportunity to create the data themselves. The data is based on what kinds of jellybeans the students prefer and their decisions control the data for the project. In the second video, the teacher is focused on the main character of the book the class is reading. The teacher has the students record what they are thinking about issues in the story.
In the first video, the students are creating data based on the flavors of jellybeans the members of the class like. They then use this data to write a problem and share the problem with the class. Students get the opportunity to feel connected to their peers because they can compare their preferences to those of their friends. In the second video the teacher does a cool activity where she has the male students write as if they were the male character in the story and the female students write as if they were the female character in the story. Then the students pair up with a boy and a girl in each pair. The students then read what they have written to their partner. In this activity students are seeing the mindset of their peers and how others think differently or alike.
In the jellybean activity I would have tried to do the same activity with a variety of different subjects. For example, they used the data of favorite flavor jellybeans, and then they could have done a data collection about favorite seasons, birthday months, favorite animals, etc.

Educational Psychology: Response to prompt #8

bpeffley — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:06:16 +0000

As an intervention specialist probably all of my students will lack executive functioning. One process I have learned about in my I.S classes that I think would help students develop executive functioning is task analysis. Through this process I could work with students to help them achieve a goal. When using task analysis a teacher takes a goal and breaks it into smaller steps that the student can take to reach the larger goal. By working with a student to help them understand the small steps they will take to reach their goal they will begin to understand how to plan out steps and follow them to achieve something they may not be able to do without approaching it by breaking it into smaller steps. Another thing I have learned that could help students with their executive functioning is helping them learn how to follow schedules. Intervention specialists usually approach this task by supplying students with picture schedules they can follow because they may not having the reading or comprehension abilities to follow written instructions. I could display picture schedules of the students’ daily routines so they could look at their schedule and the picture would prompt them to hang their coats up, then the next picture would prompt them to go to their group reading stations and so on through out the day (those were just examples of something they may have to do daily in class). This would help them develop executive functioning because they would be practicing being responsible for their own achievement.

Educational Psychology: Response to prompt 7

bpeffley — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:09:32 +0000

I think she used the operant conditioning theory because she used positive and negative reinforcements to change her husband’s bad behavior. She gave him something he enjoyed, like a kiss whenever he did something she liked. When he displayed bad behaviors, she just ignored him.
One behaviorist method that I noticed is that she rewarded good behaviors he had. These behaviors were small behaviors that were leading up to a bigger behavior goal. She also took the approach where she ignored him when he behaved in a way that she didn’t approve of. The trainers did this when they ignored the dolphins. The trainers would ignore the dolphins until they stopped doing whatever was unwanted and she did the same thing with her husband.
I feel that a child’s behaviors at first cannot be completely blamed on the child. When a child enters your classroom, a lot of their behavior is learned from the home environment. For example, I observed in a kindergarten class and there was a student who liked to call the teacher and his peers by bad names. The words this five-year-old was using were not just an innate part of his vocabulary. He learned these words from home and obviously heard them used often because he knew what they meant and he used them correctly in sentences. In his house it may be that this vocabulary was excepted behavior. So then when he comes to the classroom and uses the same behavior you can’t blame it on him because he doesn’t realize it’s not acceptable in other environments.
Nobody likes to be nagged at. Nagging is simply just annoying and aggravating for the person on the receiving end. When you start to nag someone they get annoyed and either tune you out and completely ignore you or they start an argument. Either way you lose.

Educational Psychology: Response to prompt #6

bpeffley — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:26:18 +0000

It’s helpful that the students wrote down what they knew before the lesson so the teacher had an idea of what problems they needed to address. The teacher could see that the students didn’t understand something or that they already knew a lot about something so she didn’t need to spend as much time covering it.
The questions the student had demonstrated that the student was interested in learning more about trees and wanted to expand his/her knowledge on the subject.
I don’t think the teacher’s comments were very specific or detailed in answering the student’s questions. The teacher would have to elaborate more on what he/she commented in order to thoroughly answer the student’s questions. However, the comments were a good guide and encourage the student to be even more interested in the topic.
I think the student was wanting more information from the teacher than what he/she actually received. The student asked a lot of interesting questions and the teacher didn’t answer all of them. I feel that if the teacher was going to set the lesson up in such a way that the students asked the questions about knowledge they wanted to gain then the teacher should have done more to make sure they met the student’s desires. The student is obviously interested in trees and the teacher should also do more to further this interest by encouraging the student to investigate and find the answers to their questions and then they could reflect on it together.

Educational Psychology: Response to prompt #5

bpeffley — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:53:32 +0000

Group 2 initially makes the mistake of not manipulating one variable at a time. They change all three variables at one time and this won’t help them get an accurate answer. They need to change one variable and see how it affects the pendulum swing. Then they should record their observations and try changing another variable.
He tried to guide the students in the right direction without just giving them the answer. He wanted them to analyze the problem and figure out what was wrong on their own.
By adding the paperclips they have not only changed the weight, but also the length of the string. This puts them in the same situation as before. They have accidentally changed two variables instead of just one.
This time the teacher explains a little more to the group than he did before. He points out to them that they have unknowingly altered the length of the string too. However, he still encourages their critical thinking skills by asking them to think about how they can change the weight of the pendulum without also changing the length of the string.
The students think that if they shorten the length of the string and use paperclips to replace the length they took away that this would fix the problem. They decide that using the old information would be equivalent to what they are doing at the moment.
An advantage of this activity is that students are able to construct their knowledge by testing theories and testing what their prior beliefs were. The students can add to their prior knowledge or correct prior misconceptions. A disadvantage would be that if the students come to the wrong conclusion then they have constructed a belief of how something works and it may be difficult to reverse that and convince them that their beliefs are wrong.

Educational Psychology: Response #4

bpeffley — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:02:29 +0000

From the video, I can see that the teacher uses meaningful learning in her classroom. She connects the students’ prior knowledge about states and their climates to help them to think critically in order to understand how it affects the economy. She uses elaboration in the video because she adds information to the concepts she introduces to the students. By doing this she is helping to cement the concept for the students. She also guides the students encouraging them to discuss and think until they get to the answer she needs. By instructing the students to get together in groups and discuss their ideas together she is utilizing organization.

2. During her lesson she uses a chart to compare and contrast the states and their cultural geography and climate. She has a map pulled down which will help students to visualize the locations they are talking about and where they are located in relation to other states.

3. One way the teacher could help the students get the information into their long-term memories is by taking the content of this lesson and incorporating it into the next lesson or maybe even the next few lessons. This way students could draw connections between the information from this lesson and new material. I also didn’t notice her using cues and she could try this approach to help the students remember the information that she thinks is crucial. Rote learning may be used a little because there are some terms used that students could have to memorize word-by-word, but these will probably not make it into their long-term memory and they will forget them after they are tested over them.