Dear Cognitive Theories of Learning
As I reflect on my first year teaching kindergarten, I realize how much I've grown. I haven't just grown in just classroom management or lesson planning, but in understanding how young children actually learn. Cognitive learning theories, the information processing model to be more particular, has given me a new insight into what happens inside my students minds as they explore letters, numbers, and the world around them. Reading about the Cognitive Theories of Learning has helped me realize that learning isn't just about what we teach but how we help students remember and apply it.
One of the biggest takeaways from the cognitive theories of learning is the importance of attention. According to Slavin (2020), attention is a limited resource, like money, we only have so much of it to spend. I've most definitely seen this in my classroom. Working with 5 and 6-year olds, attention can shift in an instant. One moment they're listening to me reading a story, the next they are playing with the strings of someone else's tennis shoes. Slavin (2020), describes how sensory registers receive large amounts of information from each of the senses (sight, hearing, touch, small, taste) and hold it for a very short time. Unless the brain is told to pay attention, that information will be lost.
This year I have learned a lot of attention grabbers such as hand gestures, and dramatic pauses to signal that something important was coming. These strategies didn't just keep my students entertained and interested, they were activating their executive processes. These processes as Slavin (2020) describes, act like command to a persons brain: "Brain, pay close attention to incoming stimuli of this type; look carefully in long-term memory for relevant information and skills already in there; put the new stimuli, knowledge, and skills together to create new knowledge; and file that knowledge in a place where I can easily access it whenever I need it. Do it right now, and pretty much ignore everything else until you're done!" Next year I want to add more emotion to lessons to increase student engagement. Slavin (2020) points out that another way to gain attention is to increase the emotional content of material and that attention and emotion activate some of the same parts of the brain. This makes sense because its explains why students remember funny or exciting moments in lessons rather than plain facts. I'm planning on incorporating more puppets, music, and dramatic storytelling next school year to build upon this in my own teaching.
Another important concept I learned is the working memory which can only hold 5 to 9 bits of information at one time (Slavin 2020). Early in the year, I was trying to go based on our school curriculum for teaching sight words, so I used to try to teach students 3-5 sight words in one day like the curriculum said. At the end of it, my students were frustrated and so was 1. Looking now, especially after reading about the limited capacity of the working memory, I now understand. Stuffing too much information in a young child's brain all at once is like overfilling a cup with water.
Now, after that whole frustration period, I do take things slower. We learn about three words a week and sometimes it rolls over into the next week to build upon those words. I create songs for each song so that students can remember them, and we don't move on until they're ready. Slavin (2020) emphasizes the importance of reversal, and that one way to hold information in working memory is to think about it or say it over and over. I've also found that incorporating movement into rehearsal worked for my previous set of students.
Understanding the different types of long-term memory has also changed the way I plan on teaching. Slavin (2020) explains that long-term memory consists of episodic, semantic, and procedural memory. I've always loved storytelling, and I now see why it's so effective. It taps into the episodic memory. When students "act it out" (act out a scene from a book) or write about what happened on the weekend, they're tying new content to personal experiences.
I remember when I was teaching my students about community helpers, and instead of just reading the book series on its own, we eventually turned the classroom into a "mini town". Students dressed up at community helpers (firefighters, nurses, teachers, post men), and we even tied money into this lesson with the penny, nickel, dime, and quarter. Students bought things using their money and they loved it. Even at the end of the year, they could tell me what each community helper does. Slavin (2020) told me that I can improve my students' retention of concepts and information by explicitly creating memorable events involving visual or auditory images. Next year, I plan to use more simulations and project based learning to strengthen these memory connections.
Slavin (2020) also highlights the importance of schemata, which are networks of related ideas that guide our understanding and action. One activity that worked well this year was farm animals and classifying those animals for math and making picture word addition or subtraction problems. Then, I did it because they didn't know what farm animals were, but now I can see that it was helping my students build schema. They were organizing knowledge in a way that makes building on that knowledge easier and faster. Next year, I do plan on using more Venn diagrams to organize my students knowledge and help them visually connect and categorize new information and ideas. This is so important in kindergarten where students are learning and developing the skills and abilities to this abstractly. These tools can help bridge the gap.
Thinking historically, it's evident that instructional strategies have evolved over the last 200 years. There was once a time where classrooms required memorization and now today's classrooms focus on individualized learning. Some things haven't changed though. Students still need structure, encouragement, and human connection. What has changes has been our knowledge of the human brain and how it works. As a person who is just beginning my career, I can only imagine how veteran teachers have seen students change over the year.
Going into my second year, I feel more confident and prepared, especially with a better understanding of how learning words. I now recognize that curriculum is supplemental and that pacing lessons to respect the limitations of working memory and the value of using emotional and sensory experiences to capture attention, and the power of helping students connect new information to what was already known. Kindergarten is a magical place where foundational skills are formed. By applying cognitive learning theories, my goal will be to create learning experiences where students aren't just memorizing concepts, but internalizing the concepts. I hope that next year, my students will be leaving the classroom understanding how to learn and loving it.
References
Slavin, R.E (2020). Educational psychology: Theory and practice 13th ed.). Pearson Education.
No comments:
Post a Comment