Month: February 2017

In today’s blog post I will be talking about child development and how it correlates with teaching methods. A crucial part of teaching is understanding where a class stands in their development. This means that the teacher should notice if the class is understanding the material or not. One year a class may excel and the next year they could have much slower students. What we learned in class was if the students had too much of a challenge or not enough of a challenge, they wouldn’t focus as much in their classes. If an educator believes that the students are capable of doing the work that is assigned to them, the best thing to do is believe in the students and stay positive. I saw a cognitive test online for different levels of elementary level shown in the link below. As we learned from the readings and class, you could also use a method like Piaget’s theory.

students.http://tests.com/practice/COGAT-Practice-Test

In our module 2 online activity we had to talk about television families. I noticed that the family I talked about, the Simpsons, were influenced heavily by their family and friends. Bart tried to act up in front of his classmates, but when he did something wrong, he felt remorse because of his mother, Marge. Lisa, on the other hand, doesn’t want to turn out like the rest of her family so she studies very hard to prepare for her future. This happens in real life too, for example, myself. My dad is a teacher so he understands the importance of staying on top of your school work so me and my siblings have always done well academically.

There are many benefits and few limitations to Piaget’s and Bronfenbrenner’s theories. In Piaget’s theory, you could help students with instructional strategies, social skills, improved understanding of cognitive development, etc. The only negative part I noticed was that in a cognitive test like his, different students possess abilities at an earlier age than others. In Bronfenbrenner’s theory, this is how certain things in a student’s life can affect how their life inside and outside of school works. These theories are standardized tests, which should see the levels your students are at or should be at. The negative parts about testings like these are that students abilities are different than others at every age. For example, when I took the ACT in high school, I didn’t know some of the material the first time I took it, but I took it again after I took a math class and scored much higher. If a teacher is looking for a general idea on where the class is at, I think these tests should be okay to base them off of, but teachers should also know not to completely base information off of tests like these ones.

(2014, September 11). Retrieved February 22, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj5QlG_EHtg

Hoy, A. W. (2017). Educational psychology: active learning edition. Boston: Pearson

 

It is almost a necessity for educators and researchers to communicate in the education field. This could really help educators determine what is useful and what is not useful methods to teach inside the classroom. If the researcher and educator each exchange ideas, it could change a big process on how they teach. A teacher is going to have a new set of students every year, so it is crucial to find out what you can do in the future by changing different teaching methods in a positive direction. I don’t necessarily think that teachers need to be researchers or researchers need to be teachers, but I do think they need to at least exchange thoughts and ideas of what they can change for the improvement of education. For information literacy, this could be very helpful by analyzing and evaluating different resources for the best efficiency. What is great about information literacy is that we have great library data bases with reliable sources that we can take advantage of. As a future educator, I plan on taking advantage of libraries and databases to better myself as a teacher and to further my knowledge.

Assigning or not assigning homework is a big dispute in schools today. I think that homework should be talked about by teachers so students don’t get an overload. I plan on teaching Physical Education and I know schools are trying to interpret homework more in this subject so this is very important to me. For homework, I believe that educators should do their best to make it more fun for the students, such as reading a book a kid wants to read instead of a class book. Sometimes I felt like, and still feel that homework is sometime done just to get it over with. I take more time and precision when I don’t have as many assignments. I would like to find more studies in the future on researchers opinions on when homework could be good or bad.

From the articles I found, they all seemed to somehow say giving homework sparingly is good for the students, but seems to be worse when there is an abundance. Another important part about giving homework is giving appropriate feedback back to the students so they know what to fix for next time. From a personal standpoint, I have been stressed plenty of times from homework overload. I think every now and then an assignment should be to play an outside activity for an hour so students can have some free time. To sum it up, research should help teachers decide what kind of homework, if any, to give to students in the classroom in each subject. Research is a great way for students and teachers to reach their full potential in knowledge by looking at scholarly articles. Since I know what it’s like being a student, I am going to plan on taking these ideas into consideration for when I become an educator in the near future.

Mitchell, M., Barton, G. V., & Stanne, K. (2000). The role of homework in helping students meet physical education goals. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 71(5), 30–34. doi:10.1080/07303084.2000.10605142

Novak, B. E., & Lynott, F. J. (2015). Homework in physical education: Benefits and implementation. Strategies, 28(1), 22–26. doi:10.1080/08924562.2014.980873

Should physical educators make greater use of homework? (2005). Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 76(2), 15-18. doi:10.1080/07303084.2005.106073

Ours, E. S., & Scrabis-Fletcher, K. A. (2013). Implementing Active Homework in Secondary Physical Education. Strategies, 26(6), 23-27. doi:10.1080/08924562.2013.839433

Should students be given homework? (n.d.). Retrieved February 06, 2017, from http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-students-be-given-homework

C. (2009, February 20). Retrieved February 06, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFp9Ll11vSg

I remember seeing this clip on CBS and I thought it was a good relation to what we are currently talking about in class. It’s about a child who believes teachers assigning homework should be considered slavery and should stay in the schools.