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Using different instructional strategies that Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, and Malenoski suggest help to incorporate the cognitivist approach into the classroom. With these strategies teachers are able to use different strategies along with technology to make learning more meaningful. With the help of technology students are able to learn new concepts and understand that there are more than one way to learn something.
Cues, Questions, and Organizers are a great way to help students think at a higher level. By using questioning during a lesson students must now think instead of giving one word answers. One way to do this is to allow students to use and organizer. Many students may want to say more to the question being asked but may have a difficult time getting their thoughts out. With an organizer it will reduce the one word answers and allow the students to think more and lay their answers out so that they can see what they are answering. Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works suggest using United Streaming. They say "use this educational video collection to create an advance organizer at the onset of a learning activity (2007, p 83). This will allow visual learners to see what they are discussing through an organizer rather than trying to collect their thoughts in their head.
Summarizing as described by the authors of Using Technology with Classroom Instruction That Works is where, "teachers work on helping students separate important information from extraneous information and state the information in their own words" (2007, p119). With this students will be able to get what is important out of the information rather than sit there and reiterate everything the teacher just stated. Using technology for summarizing and note taking is a great way for students to get the idea of keeping the important details. For instance on page 129 of Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works a character trait note-taking template was created. This allowed for students to focus in on what they needed to know i.e. different traits and examples from the book, instead of having students write a lot of information that would not really be helpful. By having an organizer to take the notes their note taking would be more beneficial in the long run when the teachers ask them questions or they have to complete an assignment on it.
References:
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Organizers are an excellent way for students to organize their thoughts especially before writing. I like to use the internet and allow students to create graphic organizers online. This really seems to help my struggling writers as they often struggle getting their ideas on paper.
ReplyDeleteI believe that students of all age groups struggle with summarization of textual material. When I began teaching, I simply told my students, "Write down what you understood from the reading". I did not realize that this was not nearly enough. Students look for a topic of key idea and when they cannot identify one they usually copy down the first sentence that they read. Since then, I have learned that summarizing is a skill that I need to teach and that the time spent teaching it usually pays off in the end.
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