I learned this week that
cognitivist theory is best used when teaching concepts and procedures. I can use this information to help prepare my
students for success at the beginning of the year. Ms. Hinton has already taught and reinforced
many procedures in her classroom. I took note of these this week. She has a procedure for coming in the
classroom (kids drop books in basket and sit at assigned seats). She has a procedure for getting their library
card and checking out books (she scans their card to see if they owe any books
and determines how many books they can check out if any). She has a procedure
for checking out books (She sets the timer and they must return to her checkout
line by the time the timer goes off). When it is time to go, the teacher waves her
hand good-bye to the students and they prepare themselves to go by standing up
and pushing in their chair. They wait
behind their chair to be dismissed. All these procedures have been
rehearsed. Even then, some students fail
to do what is expected of them. Perhaps
I can come up with mnemonics or a song of some sort to teach them the
procedure. Like, “Wave goodbye, time to
rise, push in your seat, I’ll see you next week blue table (red, black, green,
etc.)” This is just an idea. And it might only work for the younger kids,
not sure. She also had classroom
rules. And one set of rules I didn’t
know anything about at first: Tie your shoes, comb your hair, and use the
restroom before you come in. I need to
get the complete list of things that she said. I am going from memory on this.
Some of the tasks I did were calling
out library card names, checking out the books to the students, and running the
laminating machine. I learned that in
case of emergency, the machine can go backward to release perhaps an article of
clothing that gets caught. I also
learned to keep my fingers away from the hot film. She showed me a burn from the time she didn’t
do so.
We sat down and talked again about
what learning experiences I needed to have in the practicum. She had forgotten about the checklist for the
supervisor. So, I made sure she took a copy of it home to review and we talked
about how we can apply the skills to my experience in the school library. One thing we talked about was periodical
management. She suggested that I might
consider ordering online periodicals to allow access in the individual classrooms. She uses EBSCO to order print copies of the
periodicals. She said that you have to
send a guess on the price of the subscription to central office, and then they
pay the invoice when it is received from the company. There is no backorder of resources. She gave me the information on how to renew
periodical subscriptions.
I observed her lessons as
well. Ms. Hinton gave a recap of last
week by asking students if they had done their homework. Their assignment was to watch the news on
Saturday (Ground Hog Day) and report to her whether or not the groundhog saw
his shadow. Students didn’t show much
evidence of having done the assignment, yet she called on students to give
their thoughts on whether or not he had done so. She told them, that no, he did not see his
shadow, which meant that there was to be an early spring. She told them that the only way to be sure
would be to follow the weather report for the next 6 weeks to determine if the
groundhog was accurate. He has only a 39%
success rate—which was not very good.
She proceeded to talk about the
month of February. Most of her
information was lecture style at first.
She informed them that February is the shortest month with only 28 days
this year, but that for the shortest month, there’s a lot going on in it. She said that they had Groundhog Day, and
Valentine’s is coming up, as well as President’s Day on Feb. 18th. She used active learning, by asking them to
feel on their wrist for their pulse. She
asked them if they felt that, they nodded yes.
She told them that the pulse is the heart beat and that their veins
pumps blood, food, oxygen, and waste throughout the body. February is Heart
Health Month when they will learn about exercise and eating good. She also told
them that February is Black History Month, and provided a plug about
classification when she told them that a biography is a true story about a real
person.
February is also Dental Health
month. She informed students that the
only bone we actually can see on a person are their teeth. She had a cut out of a tooth and showed them
that the top was called the crown and the bottom, the root which cannot be seen
because it is in the gum. She told the
students that teeth have different jobs; to tear, to grind, etc. The school has a dentist visit this month to
check students’ teeth. She let them know
that a dentist only works with teeth and helps to keep teeth healthy.
I was very impressed at the wide
range of knowledge my supervisor contained within. I wondered if I would be as effective as her
in telling about the things that I know, or would I have to read a book first
to become more knowledgeable about a particular subject matter. She went on to say that no two people have
the same set of teeth or fingerprints.
She did mention many things I knew about, but wasn’t sure I could recall
for a lecture. She mentioned forensics to the students by
telling them about a burn victim who was identified by her teeth that matched
with her dental records.
She wanted to get across to the
kids that if they take care of their teeth, they can last a lifetime, but if
they don’t, they might need false teeth called dentures. She had pulled several books on the subject
of teeth and she did really short book talks on them.
She went over with the students how
to find their particular book read on the AR reading site. She said that she had two books with similar
titles and in order to ensure that the correct book comes up, they must look at
the sticker on the inside upper left hand corner of the book and type in the
quiz number. To make sure they are
taking the English [En] and not the Spanish [Sp] version. Also, they learned that if the wrong test
comes up, they tell the computer, “Do not want to take the test.” She does not want the students to bring the
book back until they have taken the AR test on it. I was unsure of this at first because I was telling
the students to bring the books back even if they haven’t taken the test, so I could
recheck it out to them.
The last class was fifth grade and
they had not had much time on the unit she taught on the “Good Ole Days.” So Ms. Hinton gathered several objects
together. She had a set of items that
she wanted the students to match up to another set of items on the table. Each group got one or two items. They were to discuss what it was and which
item it should be matched with. Most of
the items were foreign to the students, such as the crochet needle, the corn
cob, the oil can, and the bottle opener, as well as the juice opener. The two items properly matched up were the aspirin
bottle with the medicine bottles, and the negatives with the photo. The corn cob was intended to be matched with
the toilet paper roll because in the good ole days people used a corn cob as
their tissue. And much later they used Sears
Roebuck catalogs. The oil can (looked
like it was the one used on Tin Man), was to be matched with the modern can of
household oil. The crochet needle was to
be matched with the yarn. And the bottle
opener was to be matched with a can of corn.
This was a great active learner activity, which was kinesthetic, visual,
and engaging. I think that there are
ways I can incorporate matching games with artifacts as well. My strengths lay in poetry, written word,
art, music, Spanish and I can say goodnight in many different language, and the
beach. I once did an artifact activity
in history class and we had to tell about a person’s life from things like
playbills, and tickets, and rocks, etc.
I still remember that activity till this day. I have a feeling the students at my school
will not soon forget what they learned either.
