My Reflection Blog (EDAT 6115)

  Do you ever think if the way you’re teaching is effective or not? Even if it seems to be effective, do you look for ways to improve your craft? After reading Chapters seven and eight, I certainly did. This week’s concept about the different ways to implement instruction peaked interest in me. I am constantly looking for ways to make my lessons more engaging and effective for my students. This school year became very repetitive for me and I;m it did the same for my students. Every week was the same old thing. Nothing too exciting. I tried my best to make it more engaging, but the things I tried did not spark an interest in my students. In chapter 7, It talked about adding humor and more activities to the lesson when it is direct instruction. It also said that student-centered lessons can be effective if done correctly. Over the summer, I am going to take what I learned, and go back and revise my lessons and look into how to model my expectations for cooperative learning groups. I ...

  This week’s concept was very interesting! Learning about how our brains retain information was the most informative! You may ask “Why does this matter in education?” How our students retain the content we teach depends on how their brains process. Working memory deals with the students actively learning something and being filed as something they need to know and something they pretty much can trash. I like to think of it as an email. After reading an email, if it is important or we feel it has enough value to keep it, we star it. But if an email is something we feel we don't need, we trash it. When I am teaching content. I want my students to pretty much star the information that is being taught, not trash it. My question is what steps should be taken if I realize a student is not “filing” the information to be stored in long term memory.

  This chapter was amazing! I do not feel alone in my struggles anymore. In the beginning of the year, I struggled just like Ms.Esteban with my students blurting out. Unlike Ms. Esteban, I addressed it immediately, and began to ignore the behaviors I did not want to see and praise the ones that I would like for students to follow. My biggest flaw with this was not being consistent. There were times when a student would blurt out the answer and I would accept it, which did the opposite of modeling the behavior I expected. I learned that I should pair my students raising their hand with getting my attention. If students blurt out, I should ignore the behavior, if it is not what I expect. I want to condition them to where they raise their hand when they want my attention instead of blurting out when they want my attention. I also have to remain consistent with this expectation in order for it to work.

  I feel Education Psychology is very important because it deals with how we teach. This is something I have struggled with being a first year teacher. I am also asking myself am I delivering the lesson/message in a way that my students can understand it. I know that I understand the standards fully, but I also wonder to myself how to transmit this knowledge to my fourth- graders in a way that they can understand it. As I reflect on this school year, I notice that I lacked engaging lessons. Therefore my students were uninterested and unmotivated to learn. I know that I need to take in account my students interest for next year, when creating my lessons.