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
Austin, great post I like how you address one of the challenges of being a teacher is knowing where your students are at cognitively, and the challenge with that being that students are going to be at different ability levels. Then basing your class off of the students’ ability so the class is not too hard or too easy for the students. I also liked the reference to The Simpsons, and how family has a huge impact on a student’s life like Bronfenbrenner’s theory explains. Overall, a great post keep up the good work!
Austin, awesome post! I enjoyed reading the beginning statements of your post. I agree with you that students should be challenged, but not pushed past their learning capacity. I also think that it was a great idea to link your post to Piaget’s, and Bronfenbrenner’s theories and how those can be applied in learning and in your future classroom. Nice job, and I look forward to reading more of your posts!