Social Cogntivism Blog

Modeling

The skill I modeled was how to outline a paper and prepare a thesis statement. (Fun right? haha)

But this is an incredibly useful skill for high school and college students. It will pay ten-fold in grades, and, as I have recently learned, possibly result in being published.

First I have copies of an idea map, much like the following which I made for a similar assignment:

Then I fill out the map with ideas for my paper. In the main idea oval, I write, "Why being an English teacher rocks." Then in each of the boxes beneath that, I write reasons why teaching English is greats, such as English being relevant in the world, bringing people together through common literary experiences, and  helping people prepare for life. Below that row, in the bottom boxes, I will add experiences or examples supporting each idea.

Then, I have my student(s) fill out the same diagram for their topic/idea. Helping them along the way.

Then, from these main ideas, we can build our wroking thesis statement.

I begin with the sentence starter: "What I want to prove in this paper is... and I can prove it because...(1, 2, and 3)." For my example, my sentence would read, "What I want to prove in this paper is that being an English teacher rocks, and I can prove it because English is relevant, it brings people together, and prepares people to participate in the real world."

To turn that into a thesis statement, we simply cross out the unnecessary bits.

"What I want to prove in this paper is that Being an English teacher rocks, and I can prove it because English is relevant, it brings people together, and prepares people to participate in the real world."

Then students can use the same process with the ideas from their map, and create their own working thesis.

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So, throughout this process of modeling, I feel like  I could help better keep their attention by adding a third step. Above, I have an "I do" and a "you do" but in between I need a "we do." Perhaps on the board, using a student generated topic, they can contribute to filling out the idea map together, coming up and writing the topic, a supporting idea or an example.

Same thing with the thesis statement portion. Actively having students participate in the "we do" practice can help keep their attention.

I would also like to bring in some examples and models, both my own experiences, and previous students, who an explain how this method helped them write a stellar paper that got published, got a much needed "A", got them into the University of their choice, etc. to help show students that writing a great essay can open a lot of doors in life.

There's a ton of scaffolding inherent to this, so if I pre-assess students on their strategies to writing a paper, I will be able to see where they are in terms of planning, and provide how ever much scaffolding is needed for a given class/student.

In an English class, students will end up writing a lot of essays/narratives/etc., so each time I assign one, I can give them the map, so that over the year, they equate writing an essay with "first: map it!"

Reinforcement can come either by praising good use of the map, by awarding points, and vicarious reinforcement can come through seeing how others have succeeded by using the idea map.

Information Processing Blog

Attention seems to be the top priority for information processing. I plan to help keep my students' attention focused by varying the activities within any given class period. Lectures get boring quickly, and so I plan to use a more discussion based model. Roughly every 10 minutes, the mode of teaching or activity should change. So, we can switch from discussion, to writing, to pair share, to role playing, to visual presentation, and so on to keep students from falling into torpor. Another good strategy for attention is to draw on prior knowledge and interests. In a lesson I gave recently on "The Hero's Journey" I used The Lord of the Rings and students were able to connect the steps of the hero's journey to a book/movie they were all familiar with. I had all eyes open, all students participating. It was awesome.

Along with breaking the lesson up, giving students a chance to rehearse the information helps keep it in their working memory, which increases the likelihood of it getting encoded to long term memory. Simple "say back" rote memorization can help. But better yet is pair share, where students need to put info into their own words because a deeper level of processing is required to summarize or paraphrase than to simply repeat. Even short writing activities can help students process the information, keeping it in working memory. Some students may prefer pair share over writing or vice versa, depending on their learning style, so I plan to offer both each day.

Then, for deeper encoding, I would like to give students a chance to apply what they've learned in a new context, on their own. So, for example, they might be putting the semi-colon into action in a homework writing assignment after we've worked on it in class. Or they might practice writing a paragraph with a logical fallacy, and without it, to help really encode that knowledge and be able to draw it from their brain and use it.

Using Shaping in the Classroom- Behaviorism Blog

I think a really clear example of how I will use shaping in my English classes in through teaching writing. It seems that a lot of teachers assign writing, but it isn't often explicitly taught. I've recently worked on a unit plan for writing, and really honed in at each step of writing a paper, from pre-writing, organization, the first draft, peer review, revision, proofreading, and final draft. At each step of the writing process, we can focus in on that step, guide students through it, provide feedback and reinforce success through praise and grades. Then we can see how that step connects to the writing process as a whole. After the assignment is done, we can reflect on how each step made the finished product that much better. Ideally, seeing how much easier it was to write a paper (and probably receiving a higher grade) will be a cumulative reinforcer, increasing the likelihood that they will go through the steps again the next time they write a paper.