Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Chapter 1 Blog

Jean Piaget changed the way how we think children learn by his framework. He described learning as the modification of children's cognitive structures as they interact with their environment. So basically, children learn in a social learning environment, where they are actively engaged participants constructing their knowledge from previous experiences and culture backgrounds, where they have multiple opportunities to model dialogue about their learning. The process of learning is that knowledge is originated in the brain, origination is cognitive structure and is organized into categories. Categories are called are called schemata and schemata becomes increasingly integrated as knowledge grows. As children learn they enlarge their existing schemata or make new ones. Children use 5 strategies of learning. They rehearse- repeating information over and over, predicting- anticipating what will happen, organizing- grouping information into categories, elaborating-expanding on information presented,and monitoring- regulating or keeping track of progress, basically assessing what they've done.
The 6 components of language arts are: Listening, talking, reading, writing, viewing and visually representing. These are how children learn and when teaching language arts these are key in getting the children interested in the book and to engage then in stimulating activities. Listening is a way students use listening strategies and monitor their comprehension in order to listen more carefully. A way to integrate listening into a lesson plan is maybe by reading a book aloud to class. Talking is a key part in learning and can be used for both aesthetic and efferent purposes. For talking, you could ask questions to the students about certain things that are going on in the book. Reading is making sense of everything. Incorporating reading into a lesson plan you could possibly do popcorn reading. Writing is used to develop writing fluency and is a learning tool. For writing you could have the students write a short story. Viewing is essential in helping students remember what they have learned and you could incorporate this by showing pictures or a movie. Lastly, visually representing is sharing information learned during literature focus. A way to do this in your lesson plan is maybe creating a poster.
Teaching language arts connects to how children learn by teaching them skills that can be applied to everything. It reaches them comprehension, print, study, language, and reference skills. These are skills that are needed everyday throughout a school or work environment.