No lesson on student acquisition of knowledge could be complete without a brief discussion of Jean Piaget, a philosopher. Piaget's has studied developmental stages. Three areas of Piaget's writings are schema, assimilation, and accommodation. Schema is referred to as a file folder, used to store information. Assimilation refers to when it changes information into a usable form. Accommodation is modifying the existing schema (Heinich, 2002). Throughout our teaching career we will be reminded to connect the content of the lesson to previously learned knowledge. We are to connect a link from the student's knowledge to new information. Students need kinesthetic, verbal, and/or manipulative cues to help them make the connections. I begin my lessons with "Remember what we talked about or learned yesterday..Today we are going to..." By connecting what we did yesterday, students will already be assimilating the content of today's lesson. If for some reason I can not connect yesteday's lesson, I ask a student to remind the class, what we did. At the end of the day, I conclude by revisiting everything we covered for the day. As Dr. Orey reminds us, reinforcement is powerful (Orey, 2009).
Heinrich, R., M. Molenda, J.D. Russell, and S.E. Smaldine. (2002).
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technologies for learning. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Laureate Education, Inc. (2009). Program 4. Bridging learning theory, instruction, and technology.
Behaviorist learning theory. Baltimore, MD.: Orey, Michael.
Dawn,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing how you transition into your lessons. The fact that many teachers use this to try to make connections with previous content, shows that we are putting theory into practice. This type of reinforcemnt of the content is an important step in the learning process.
Angela DeLisio
Hi Dawn - I agree that helping students "connect the dots" is essential in helping them learn. I find it interesting to ask students what connections they can make to the lesson or topic of study. Often someone will have a meaningful, personal connection and their classmates are interested in hearing about these in order to build their own schema.
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