Assignment 3—Learning I
Dana Huff
13 September 2010
Linking Exercises
NCTE (The National Council of Teachers of English) posts twelve standards for language arts at The standards or goals address a spectrum of reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. These standards include reading for a variety of purposes and from a variety of historical periods, applying reading comprehension strategies to understand and interpret texts, communicating effectively with different audiences and for different purposes, applying the writing process and conventional standards to writing, conducting research for a variety of purposes, using a variety of informational and technological resources for various purposes, developing respect for diversity through language and literature study, participating in a literacy community, and using language for a variety of purposes. In addition, for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages), a goal of making use of their first language to develop competency in English and understand content across the curriculum is explained.
Certainly some of these goals have motivational components. I have taught for eleven years, and I always have reluctant readers who will not read for a variety of purposes; sometimes they will do their class reading, but they certainly won’t read for pleasure or information. Respecting diversity is also a goal largely dependent on motivation. Some students I have had enjoy learning about people who are different from them in literature, while others always view these characters as “the other.”
Fun and Learning I
There were two Indians who went to a river and met some men in a canoe. One with the men to fight even though he didn’t have arrows—the men had arrows in the canoe. He came back and figured out somehow that the men he fought with were ghosts, and then after he told the story, he died.
I would say I remembered about half the story. I didn’t find the story difficult to follow, perhaps because I am familiar with the folktale format and have read quite a few Native American folktales, but some details that did cause trouble for me were the names of the places mentioned. I couldn’t remember them at all, aside from one started with E. I don’t think I added any details to the story, but I did leave quite a few details out—the details that made the least sense to me. Rather than change details to make them sound more normal to me, I just forgot them or left them out of my retelling. The concept of reconstruction could be related to constructivism in that students who are constructing information might use reconstruction to fill in details and try to remember information based on their own understanding of reality.
I teach at a Jewish high school, but I am not Jewish myself. I sometimes help my students remember material from class by relating it to something from the Tanach (Hebrew Bible) or Judaism. For instance, when I teach The Odyssey, we discuss the Greek beliefs regarding hospitality. We discuss why Odysseus might feel that Polyphemus the Cyclops is obligated to show him and his crew hospitality when they basically walk into his home when he is not present and start eating and drinking his food and drink. I relate it to the biblical story of Lot, who offered his own daughters to the men of Sodom rather than see his guests violated. These two stories provide a way for students to relate the ancient Greek concept of hospitality to another example with which they are familiar. My knowledge of the information they already have can help them. In the example provided, they can relate something new—the beliefs about hospitality in The Odyssey—to something they already know, which will help them organize the information and remember it better.
Fun and Learning II
Me: Tell me what you remember.
Husband: 1, 8, 5, 4, 9, 2, 3, 6, 7, 0, 2, 5, 9, 1
Me: OK, now I’m going to give you some more information to study the same way.
Husband: OK.
Me: OK, time’s up. What do you remember?
Husband: c, k, s, l, a, f, j, u, e, w, b, m, d, x, s, f
Me: OK, now we’re going to try a different list.
Husband: leaf, fence, is, lamp, bird, street, tomato, the, public, walking, bird, open, purple, cone
Me: OK, there is a fourth list.
Husband: 0, 4, 8, 1, 2, 1, 6, 2, 0, 2, 4, 2, 8, 3, 2
Me: OK, and a fifth list.
Husband: g, r, e, e, k, d, i, c, t, i, o, n, a, r, y
Me: OK, one more list.
Husband: look, shaggy, dog, is, running, across, grass, towards, woman, with, open, arms, green, Frisbee
My husband was able to remember all but one of the numbers in the first set of items. I attribute that finding to an observation I’ve had many times that he has a good memory for numbers in particular. My husband added two letters that were not in the sequence to the end of the second list and also deleted the final letter. In the third list, he left out four items and moved a fifth to a different place in the sequence when he recited it. I do see evidence that the memory can only hold a certain amount of information, particularly with the third set of items, which were words that had no connection to each other. He seemed to do better with the numbers.
My husband did remember more information from the last three lists than the first three. He didn’t miss any items from list five. He changed the order a bit in the sixth, but because the sequence essentially told a story, he was able to chunk the information together. Also with the fourth set of items, the numbers, there was some repetition and something closer to a pattern than in the first set (which he already did very well with).
My husband did remember more information from especially the beginning parts of the lists in the first three sequences, which is a phenomenon called the Primacy Effect. If I am teaching new information, I might want to present the more important information first in order to capitalize on the Primacy Effect. Then, I might want to summarize at the end to capitalize on the Recency Effect, or the tendency to remember the most recent information best.
Fun and Learning III
Pattern 1 Start / 7:42Pattern 1 Stop / 7:44
Pattern 2 Stop / 7:45
Pattern 2 Stop / 7:48
I actually learned the first pattern faster, even though I was asked to visualize the second before I tried it. I think the movements somehow felt more natural with the first. The kind of memory I used to store the patterns in is called short-term or working memory.
I didn’t actually learn the second pattern faster, but I assume it might work for others because they are doing a form of rehearsal or practice in their minds before they try it with their hands. One thing that might contribute to the ability to learn the second pattern more quickly is the Recency Effect, particularly as visualization was encouraged prior to engaging in the task. Another reason someone might learn the second pattern more quickly is time was given to rehearse the information, which helps the information stay in the short-term memory longer or move into the long-term memory. Proactive Inhibition could have contributed to the fact that the second pattern took longer for me than the first. I had learned the other pattern, and my fingers wanted to continue with the other pattern I had already learned, which made it difficult for me to repeat the pattern five times with no mistakes. It might have helped me if the two similar tasks did not have to be learned so closely together.
Fun and Learning IV
Baby Berit is responding to Big Brother Lane based on classical conditioning. The stimulus of fingers on her neck evokes the response of feeling tickled. Because she has been tickled so many times, she begins to anticipate the sensation of tickling with Lane’s fingers near her neck, which has become a conditioned stimulus. Lane’s fingers are an antecedent stimulus because they cue Berit that she is about to be tickled.
Like Lane, Madison sees Berit’s giggling as a reinforcer. He amuses her with his leapfrogging, and once he sees it elicits a giggle, he repeats the behavior. Berit didn’t giggle as much after their father came in the room, but I predict that the reinforcement will have a variable ratio because Madison obtained such good results that he might try leapfrogging again at a later time, even though Berit didn’t appear to be as amused at the end. She actually laughed really hard for a while before she became bored with Madison’s antics. Gradually, however, Madison’s behavior may become extinct. He may not see much value in leapfrogging if Berit no longer reinforces him for it, but it may take a while for extinction to occur.
Even my most creative ideas might lose their punch after a while, as students are no longer amused by my own antics. The result should be that I try different tactics because a behavior cannot be considered a reinforcer unless it strengthens a behavior, and if I am not receiving feedback from students that they are enjoying or are engaged in creative material, then it’s not working as it should.
Art Room
Journaling
When I am reading the chapters in this course, I typically type notes. I have a MacBook with MS Word 2008, and I’m not sure if the notebook view feature is available in other versions of Word, but I have been using it since I discovered it. I take screenshots of some of the particularly helpful charts and diagrams from the online version of the book and insert them in the notes to help me study. Because the quizzes involve bold terms, I make sure those are included in my notes. I do a shortened version of the PQ4R technique when I read. Until I read this lesson’s chapters, I wasn’t familiar with the technique, but I had been taught (and had taught my students) the SQ3R method. I generally flip through the pages, surveying the headings and pictures. I do not, however, turn the headings into questions—this is a step I skip. I take notes as I read, rather than read the chapter in its entirety because it works better for me to engage in what I’m reading as I’m reading by taking notes. I typically review my notes rather than the chapter when I study for the quizzes.
Some techniques that have been built into the activity structure of this course that I noticed include summarizing information. For example, the Baby Berrit exercise was designed to apply the reading selection to a situation, which enabled me to summarize what I had learned about conditioning. However, the main technique I see used is writing to learn. I respond to questions designed to make me think about my reading and how it applies to my teaching. Journaling, Reviewing, and Fun and Learning activities involve writing to learn. In addition, Art Room is a kind of mapping that enables me to make visual connections to what I am learning, which will help me remember and make connections between main ideas.
Review
I honestly found so much of this reading intriguing that it’s hard for me to pick one intriguing thing. If I am to be honest, the one thing I found fascinating was the description of how children learn to discern which animals are dogs. I have always wondered how children learned that such disparate creatures were all dogs when they look so very different, and the idea that they have an unconscious process of learning traits and adding or deleting the traits that fit with their “dog” schema was very interesting to me. Also, my grandfather suffered a stroke in May, and reading about the different parts of the brain and what they control and how they communicate was very interesting to me in light of my grandfather’s having forgotten how to use his DVD player and microwave, but remembering other things, which led me to conclude that the area of his brain that controls procedures for movement was impacted by the stroke, as was his automaticity for certain tasks. My mother reports that he doesn’t like to read books now, and I think it may be that it requires too much work to process (much as the book describes for dyslexics). He reads the paper, but I suspect that’s more glancing over headlines and pictures than trying to read and comprehend the articles. I think I can use the information about how children create schemata and how the brain functions to better understand my students’ errors. For example, my students may have come up with a scheme for writing that I need to help them refine or add to so that they can become better writers, or my students may have problems with automaticity that I can’t identify with, but knowing about them might help me develop strategies that will help them learn—for example, if I have a student who is dyslexic or learning disabled, it helps me to know they are working much harder to do the same task as an automatic reader is, and perhaps I can help the student develop means of compensating for this lack of automaticity.
Learning about learning was not only interesting, but also critical to my success as a teacher. If I can determine what motivates my students to learn, how they remember information, and how they regulate (or do not regulate) their behavior and respond to stimuli in my class, I can be a more effective teacher. I can help my students retain more information, but more importantly, I think I can make learning more engaging for them, which will motivate them to learn more. In addition, knowing how reinforcement works can enable me to use it more effectively, and knowing how students transfer information to their long-term memory (and how they can retrieve it later) will help me plan assessments. What these chapters really helped me do is learn more about what goes on in the mind and how students learn. I’m not sure how anyone can be an effective teacher without using the techniques mentioned in these chapters.