martes, 14 de junio de 2011

FINAL ESSAY: ACTIVITIES IN THE CLASSROOM

ACTIVITIES IN THE CLASSROOM

In education so as in English Language Teaching, activities and materials play an important role. It is well known nowadays that we as teachers must improve our practices through designed those items that help us to reach our purposes. Thus, we must take into consideration the learning styles and the interests of our students. As we can see the use of different materials and activities in the classroom really impacts the motivation and the effort of the students. This paper will try to provide a wider view about the different kind of activities that are based on the cognitive theory and the metacognition, the influence both have in teaching practices, and the way in which we as future teachers can improve our classes..
First of all, it is necessary to understand better the term “cognitivism”. According to Carretero (1998, p.78) The cognitivism is “a theory that defines learning as an internal, active, creative process” .It emphasizes the critical role that memory plays in helping us translate new information into a form that is meaningful and will allow us to retrieve it and be able to use it. Memory involves three processes: attention, encoding and retrieval.  The cognitivist paradigm essentially argues that the “black box” of the mind should be opened and understood. The learner is viewed as an information processor (like a computer). There are many authors who contribute to this topic, but the most important are: Jean Piaget, Lev Vigotsky and J. Anderson.
On the other hand one of the most important characteristics about cognitivism is that it also takes into consideration the social interaction, it means, it is focused in the culture and in the social environment. Another important element in order to understand better this approach is the  aim for education, that  according to Piaget, is to make individuals who are critical, creative and inventive discoverers. So the major part of the child’s learning relies on active experimentation and discovery.  The active classroom has been associated with the term progressive teaching, where pupils are in active role, learning predominantly by discovery techniques, with emphasis on creative expression.  Subject matter tends to be combined, with the teacher performing as a guide to educational experiences and encouraging cooperative work.  External rewards and punishments are seen as being unimportant, and there is not so much concern with traditional academic standards and testing (Spencer, 1994). 
Having defined this theory and obtained a wider view about cognitivism, it is important to define a cognitive activity. Drisoll ( 2000, p.365) defines it as an “ activity that is the private mental process for someone. Such as change from childhood to adulthood in mental images of the world outside, or how children learn right from wrong”.In other words, it is referred to how we as teachers notice the way of learning of our . It is an unconscious process and once we have realized the way students learn, we use specific activities according to their learning styles.
As a third element in cognitive activities is memory; but why? Learning new information or skills requires the use of two special terms, cognitive load and working memory. Cognitive load is the demand placed upon working memory to process a certain task or concept. Working memory is the space where learning occurs.  In this way, an important aspect to consider of cognitive psychology incudes meaningful learning, organization, and elaboration. Some examples of cognitive activities are memory games, songs and CUE learning.
Although cognitivism has had extreme influence in the education last decades, there has surged another high level: metacognition. Taylor (1999) defines metacognition as “an appreciation of what one already knows, together with a correct apprehension of the learning task and what knowledge and skills it requires, combined with the agility to make correct inferences about how to apply one’s strategic knowledge to a particular situation, and to do so efficiently and reliably.” Metacognition, or the ability to control one's cognitive processes (self-regulation) has been linked to intelligence (Borkowski et al., 1987; Brown, 1987; Sternberg, 1984, 1986a, 1986b). Sternberg refers to these executive processes as "metacomponents" in his triarchic theory of intelligence (Sternberg, 1984, 1986a, 1986b). Metacomponents are executive processes that control other cognitive components as well as receive feedback from these components. According to Sternberg, metacomponents are responsible for "figuring out how to do a particular task or set of tasks, and then making sure that the task or set of tasks are done correctly" (Sternberg, 1986b, p. 24). These executive processes involve planning, evaluating and monitoring problem-solving activities. Sternberg maintains that the ability to appropriately allocate cognitive resources, such as deciding how and when a given task should be accomplished, is central to intelligence.
Another definition of metacognition is provided by AlleyDog (2004, p.87) as “ the act of thinking about thinking, or the cognition of cognition”. It is the ability to control one’s own thoughts.
“Metacognitive strategies include changing behaviors based on the successes or lack of successes of those behaviors. Within formal learning situations, learners who were able to use metacognitive strategies would be able to adjust study techniques, activities within learning areas, and assignments based on past performance.Instructors typically create heavily structured learning environments. They regulate learner behaviors” Clark (2003,p183)
In other words, metacognition has to do with being conscious about our own learning process, this is, once a student realized with which activities he or she learn better he or she will try to look for those activities by himself/herself. In this way, Effective learning involves planning and goal-setting, monitoring one's progress, and adapting as needed. By teaching students these skills - all of which can be learned - we can improve student learning.
More recent studies demonstrate that metacognition can be taught and learned. We as teachers can improve our classes by:
Step 1: Teach students that the ability to learn is not a fixed quantity: The key to a student's ability to become a self-regulated (i.e., metacognitive) learner is understanding that one's ability to learn is a skill that develops over time rather than a fixed trait, inherited at birth. Students who believe that the ability to learn can improve over time earn higher grades, even after controlling for prior achievement (Henderson and Dweck, 1990). These students set reasonable learning goals for themselves and have the self-efficacy to choose and use productive learning strategies. These strategies then result in learning gains. Moreover, students can be taught that their ability to learn can improve over time; those who learn this simple lesson show increased motivation to learn and improved grades (Aronson et al., 2002; Blackwell et al., 2007).

Step 2: Teach students how to set goals and plan to meet them: Many students don't set explicit learning goals for themselves, or make plans to meet any goals they might have. Yet students who received as little as half an hour of training (in the form of one-to-one tutoring) on the process of self-regulated learning outperformed students who did not receive the training in several important ways. First and foremost, they learned more. In addition, they planned how they would spend their time in the learning task, spent more of their time in goal-oriented searching, and periodically reminded themselves of their current goal (Azevedo and Cromley, 2004).

Step 3: Give students opportunities to practice self-monitoring and adapting: Accurate self-monitoring is quite difficult. Many first-year college students, in particular, are over-confident. For example, first-year students at Carnegie Mellon University were asked what grades they anticipated earning in their science and math courses. While results varied somewhat by subject area, more than 90% of students in biology, chemistry, physics and calculus courses expected to earn A's or B's. These expectations were clearly not realistic and suggested some problems on the horizon for these students.

Finally, some examples of skills and activities are provided for developing metacognition:
Monitoring and adapting strategies can be taught as learning habits. A wrapper is one tool for teaching self-monitoring behavior. A wrapper is an activity that surrounds an existing assignment or activity and encourages metacognition. For example, wrappers can be used with lectures, homework assignments, or exams. Wrappers require just a few extra minutes of time, but can have a big impact. They are effective because they integrate metacognitive behavior where it is needed - when the student is in a learning situation where self-monitoring can be helpful. Students can also get immediate feedback on the accuracy of their perceptions, thus alleviating the problem of over-confidence. Finally, wrappers require minimal faculty time.

Example: lecture wrappers

Prior to beginning the day's lecture, the instructor gives students some tips on active listening. In particular, students are encouraged to think about the key points of the lecture as they listen and take notes. At the end of the lecture, students write what they think the three most important ideas of the lecture were on an index card. After they hand those in, the instructor reveals the three most important ideas from the lecture. This immediate feedback allows students to monitor their active listening strategies. After three successive lecture wrappers (with successively less faculty support, from a mini-lecture on active listening to no advance warning), student responses increasingly matched the instructor's: 45% the first time, 68% the second time, and 75% the third (Lovett, 2008).

Example: homework wrappers

Before beginning a homework assignment, students answer a brief set of self-assessment questions focusing on skills they should be monitoring. Students complete the homework as usual, and then answer a follow-up set of self-assessment questions. For example, for a homework assignment about vector arithmetic, a student may be asked (beforehand) "How quickly and easily can you solve problems that involve vector subtraction?" and (afterward) "Now that you have completed this homework, how quickly and easily can you solve problems that involve vector subtraction?" Student reports from the homework wrappers ranged from noting that the practice exercises were helpful to them to commenting that they were probably overconfident before doing the homework problems.

Example: exam wrappers

When graded exams are returned (as soon as possible after the exam was given), students complete an exam reflection sheet. They describe their study strategies, analyze the mistakes they made, and plan their study strategies for the next exam. These reflection sheets are returned to students before the next exam, so that they can make use of the ideas they had when the previous exam was still fresh in their minds. Students identified several new approaches they would use in future exam preparation.













REFERENCES
Anderson, J.R. (1996). ACT: A simple theory of complex cognition. American Psychologist, 51 (4), 355-365.
Aronson, J., Fried, C. & Good, C., 2002. Reducing the Effects of Stereotype Threat on African American College Students by Shaping Theories of Intelligence. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 113-125.
Atkinson, R. L., & Shriffrin, R. M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control processes. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence, (Eds.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory, Vol. 2. New York: Academic.
Azevedo and Cromley, 2004. Does Training on Self-Regulated Learning Facilitate Students' Learning with Hypermedia? Journal of Educational Psychology, 96 (3), 523-535.
Blackwell, L., Trzesniewski, K. & Dweck, C. S., 2007. Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent Transition: A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention. Child Development, 78, 246-263.
Drisoll, M. P.( 2000). Psychology of learning for instruction. 2nd. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Henderson and Dweck, 1990. Achievement and Motivation in Adolescence: A New Model and Data. In S. Feldman and G. Elliott (Eds.), At the Threshold: The Developing Adolescent. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lovett, 2008. Teaching Metacognition: Presentation to the Educause Learning Initiative Annual Meeting, 29 January 2008.
Piaget, J. (1970). Genetic epistemology. (E. Duckworth, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press.
Piaget, J. (1985). The equilibration of cognitive structures. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Rumelhart, D.E., & Norman, D. A. (1981). Analogical processes in learning. In J. R. Anderson, (Ed.), Cognitive skills and their acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

viernes, 3 de junio de 2011

Reporte de práctica segunda jornada

Topic: "Places and buildings"
Date: May 27th

Due to the evaluation week  I just could give one class because my schedule was interrupted.
I introduced myself and I explained the objective of my class, however, this time I realized that most of the students did not understand what I said, so I had to clarify the information in Spanish.
As a warm up I stocked in the board a map in which students had to tell me what they saw. This activity was funny and really useful for activating their previous knowledge.
I started the class with a map of "Springfield" and I talked about that place, I used the "there is and there are" structures.
Then, I presented the vocabulary used in the map that has to do with places (theater, park, pet shop, cinemas, etc). I used flashcards as well, because I could notice that for students is much easier to make relations between an image and a concept. I followed the same procedure than the other practices. I showed a flashcard and I said the word, once I finished I repeated them again, but this time I asked students to repeat after me; so that I stocked every image in the board and next to it I wrote the word.

When I finish this activity I used another map, but this time the students must have used there is and there are according to the places they saw..... Once they did that, I divided the board in two parts, in the left side I wrote "There is" and in the right side I wrote "There are", most of the students participated by themselves.
After that all of us checked the answers and they copied the chart in the notebooks... I asked them to work in pairs, and I gave a map to each pair, they had to talked about the places they saw but using there is or there are according to the number of places they had.. Finally I asked them to do a chart and classify the information as we did it before.

All students worked and they were interested.

lunes, 30 de mayo de 2011

Reporte de práctica


CLASS REPORT
FIRST DAY

This was the first class in the third grade group “A”. The topic was “Planning holidays”.
I started introducing myself and saying the objective of my class, I could notice that most of the students understood what I said. As a warm-up I played with them “hot potatoes” about different topics such as holidays, places and things used for travelling in order to activate their previous knowledge.
After that, I played a dialogue and I used a poster for clarifying the information. I continued with the vocabulary, and for introducing to them I used colorful flashcards. When I showed to them I pronounced the word, once I had finished I repeated  the vocabulary again  one by one, but this time the students repeated it after me.  Then, I stocked the cards in the board, in this way when  I pointed out a card I asked students to tell me the word, they told me and I wrote the word in the board next to the flashcard.

After that, I presented the dialogue in the written form, I read it again pointing out the characters; and then I asked two students to perform the same dialogue. They passed to the front and perform the same dialogue.
Then I stocked the conversation in disorder for them to order it, they worked in pairs. Some minutes later all of us checked the answers. Later on, students copied the information in their notebooks and  I gave everybody a small card in which there was a place and the information in order for them to make a reservation, using the conversation as an example.
Finally they performed their dialogues and present them to the whole class.



SECOND CLASS

Next day, I said again the purpose of the class and as a warm up I used a crossword that was related to the vocabulary seen in the previous lesson.  I asked some students to the board and write or draw the meaning of that vocabulary.
Then, in order to introduce the new topic that was “Tour advertisements”  I presented an advertisements and I talked about the information that it contained. Then I made students read and noticed about the pronunciation. After that I formed pairs and I gave advertisements to each one. Then I wrote some questions on the board in order for them to answer  them according to the advertisement given to them. E.g: How much does the package cost?
We checked the answers according to their brochure and then they copied the information and used those questions for playing a conversation.
I gave them some material in  order for them to design a brochure. I gave them 10 minutes for  this activity, and I could notice that they were really interested in it.  They presented their work in front of the class.



Students that passed to the front 


                                                 They copied the information in their notebooks






                                                   The questions they must answer those questions


They worked in pairs and designed their advertisements 

Planning holidays material (day 2)


Material with which students did a brochure
Written dialogue





Lesson plan unit 4: Planning Holidays (day 2)


Planning holidays material (day 1)