As I think about ways to move my students toward a growth mindset, the brain-targeted teaching model is a great approach. Through the examination of this teaching model, I have realized students need a clear depiction of what activities and tasks lead us to a strong understanding of the content. Hardiman, Novak, , Delgado, & Stella (2012) state that, “both teachers and students need a deep understanding of the unit goals as well as the connections within the unit to other concepts”. When students and teachers have a clear visual and step-by-step guide, they can be invested in each task and make connections to the content. The concept map is a great tool to address this student need, as brain target three, learning design focuses on. As I begin unit two with my students next week, I will use the concept map to show students how certain strategies help us to understand and work through our content focus of place value, addition and subtraction. Thinking about my previous planning, there was not a clear path in my learning design. On the first day of the unit I would tell students our over arching goal but never really described how we would get there. Students were receiving information daily and could never understand how each task was connected. Moving forward this will be a vital piece of my instruction that helps students understand the big concepts in ways that connections happen like putting pieces together to complete a puzzle. Continuing to think about what is most
This unit aims to enable learners to understand the learning process and to give them the skills they need to
The learning outcomes are important. There has to be a reason on why something is being taught, and how it will be useful to the students future. Throughout the paper, I’m going to give you an example of a lesson plan I
It is important for my students to understand and value learning goals in the classroom. At the start of every chapter students will be supplied an outline of what they are going to encounter in the upcoming weeks.
When it came to designing the concept map, each member of my group had great insight and contribution to what would be included in the map in a healthy, upbuilding, cooperative, way. This came easily when we opened our mind to the fact that both the building of the robot, and the robot itself could be used by students to enhance learning through
| A good way of gaining a well rounded viewEncourages learners to be active and think
Hudgins, B.B., & Riesenmy, M.R. (1994). Teaching self-direction to enhance children’s thinking in physical science. Journal of Educational Research, 88(1), 15.
planning clusters of lessons that helps students attain conceptual understanding and procedural fluency within problem-solving contexts
I want improve upon my understanding and ability to create purposeful, contextually-relevant lesson and unit plans which are Backwards Designed, well scaffolded, and have meaningful formative and summative assessments (Goal 5).
315-317) was used throughout the lesson in order to give the students an example of how to use the strategies that were taught. Before children would work on assignments alone, the teacher would model exactly what is expected of them, and keep examples of what was modeled during the lesson so the students could look back to it if they need to. Read-alouds (Cooper, 2015, p. 37) were used in this lesson to really help children to focus on certain topics of the text. “Sometimes the best way to help children understand a particular piece of text is to read it aloud to them and discuss it with them” (Cooper, 2015, p. 37). Think-alouds (Cooper, 2015, p. 30) were incorporated into this lesson when trying to explain how to use the strategy of character mapping. Think-alouds are a great way to explain to students how to use a specific skill or strategy so that they can have a better time comprehending it. Semantic maps (Cooper, 2015, p.83) were used in this lesson for brainstorming ideas from the text to later reference when making illustrations and creating short responses to the text. This strategy is also a great tool for second-language-learners because it helps to narrow down the specific parts in the text to help create more details of the topic being taught. Cooperative “popcorn” sequencing(Annenburg Learner, 2015) was used in the lesson to allow a variety of students to participate in the
Since I was unable to help the children with their understanding of the new concept, I spent extra time going over it with them again. The students began to connect previous knowledge to the new concept using descriptive words, sensory words and emotions. As they worked in groups, they were able to think up different points of view for different characters. They played with creativity while giving human characteristic to objects. Students showed a good understanding of the material. One group in my first class gave me a great idea. As they stood up to share the point of view of a specific object, they did not tell us what object they had until the end of their writing. This made the class guess what the object was. I noticed all the students attention became more focused on what they were saying as their brains were churning. Since this was such a fun experience, I decided to continue it with my next couple classes. I was pleased with the outcome of the second lesson and how much the class not only learned from this lesson, but also how much fun they had doing
Concepts and skills are introduced to students through focus lessons that include statements of purpose as well as modeling, demonstrating and thinking aloud. The cognitive responsibility shifts more towards the student under my guided instruction. This allows students’ the opportunity to apply the learned skill or concepts to commit to learning.
In order to thoroughly engage learners and their specific brain dominance it is important to discuss subject matter with a big picture approach and then to discuss the details. This will involve learning from the left side as the small details flow into a larger subject. The right side of the brain will also be engaged when learning a subject through visualization of the big picture. In today’s school systems subjects tend to be taught the same: different subtopics are broken up and taught at different times until all material is covered. The big picture of the new material is not usually united to the many small groups of details that create it. This makes learning much more challenging instead of a natural reaction that teachers should strive for.
Understanding cognition and how we learn is essential in the developmental stages of children. Not all students learn in the same way, understanding the cognitive process will assist in the development of the students. By modifying my approach when giving instructions I have noticed growth in current students that I am working with. Using concrete materials and giving the opportunity for students to be involved in hands-on activities on a daily basis, is essential in making new material meaningful to learners.. The knowledge gained from this topic has increased my understanding and is benefiting the children I am currently
After examining the Understanding by Design framework by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, I have learned how to develop a unit by working backwards. The development of a unit is multi-layered in its focus on curriculum, instruction, and assessment. In planning I need to first assess what the big ideas are that I want my students to learn and why they are so important. In our study of Mesopotamia, we look at how our world began with the first civilization and the achievements that led to advances throughout history. The big ideas framed as understandings that I want my students to know are that the locations of civilizations and city-states in relation to specific landforms affects development and technology achievements can benefit society in a variety of areas. Then I look at what essential questions are raised and what I want students to know and be able to do. The framework looks to deepen student understanding and transfer that understanding of knowledge and skill into a performance task and other evidence of formative and summative assessments.
There is a widely held belief that commercially available computerized brain-training programs improve cognitive function. 2 Although society has accepted this correlation of “brain games” and increased cognitive ability, it has yet to be proven.1 Regardless of this, there has been a recent spawn of enterprises dedicated to creating these games. Of these enterprises, the most well-known companies are Lumosity and Brain Age.1 These companies even argue that brain training is as good as physical training.4 Websites like