Constructivism Through Technology

As a reading teacher, one of the ways I like to incorporate constructivism through technology is through book reviews. Many times as a classroom reading teacher I go to web sites to find suggestions for books, content matter, reading levels, ect. I often ask my students to pretend that they work for Barnes and Noble and that they have to write a review of the book we just read. They have to tell whether they liked it, would suggest it to others, and give a short plot summary…without giving away the story, just like we read online. However, I always have them write these reviews up in their journals but why not have them work up their reviews in a word document and then past to a website like barnesandnoble.com to the readers review section. They could see their very own work on a real website; which could be helpful to someone else deciding on that book.

Cognitivism in Practice...can you smell the learning?

The class that I teach, Guided Reading, walks students who are struggling with literacy through many strategies that help them to become more fluent readers who understand what they read. One of the very first, almost primary strategies we teach is chunking. Chunking is breaking words in to smaller parts often were syllable breaks naturally occur. Although this concept is very elementary for a struggling secondary reader it can be tricky. One of the ways that I help students to ‘experience’ chunking is to keep a small white board on my reading table; when a student comes to a word that they cannot read, I give them the white board and have them guide us a through a mini lesson on chunking that word.

It is through the use of technology, of using concept mapping and advanced organizers that help students make connections and to remember. We have to remember that kids need to hear several times, see it too, use effective graphics, give them experiences.  If we roll more of these concepts into our everday teaching, our students will have a richer educational experience.

Behaviorist Learning Theories

In my own classroom I extensively use the behaviorist learning theory with classroom management. It lends itself perfectly and frankly most behaviors take place because there is some sort of reaction either positive or negative.




Our school district has used connected math a math program where there is not a lot of practice and drill. Kids are introduced to larger concepts and then use a lot of self discovery. It is obvious to me that this approach with math does not work because too many of my students come to seventh grade and do not know things like multiplication tables and basics formulas simply because they didn’t get any ‘drill and kill’ with these essential facts. I think certainly behaviorist theories work well in the math classroom. Anything really that has to list a set of instructions or use an ordered set of procedures. Some things just need rote practice to become more fully learned. Often as teachers in my district we will use online tutorials to increase our computer skills or when learning a new computer program. I think as teachers we all use different learning theories in our classrooms and the behaviorist theory has its place.

Test

Test