What is learning?
I have been finding my inner schema this week, about learning. As I mentioned last week, I think learning should be connected with our past experiences. I think this is very crucial in the younger age when students are learning so much. It makes learning more meaningful.
How can learning be best effectuated by teachers?
I think a teacher should connect what they are teaching to students experiences. I have taught a site based reading program called Edmark. I think this program is really good because it helps student immediately connect what they are reading to, to familiar objects. For example the student will read a sentence like put the apple in the box. After the student reads that sentence they put a card with an apple on it, on top of a card with a picture of a box on it. The real objects would probably be better, but the cards work well too. This helps the students realize the letters they are putting together refer to an actual object.
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That program sounds like it is very helpful. What grade levels does this program work with and how do you gain access to it?
ReplyDeleteBrenda, it is a program I use with severe special education students. I have used it from grade school to high school. It is very direct. I would not recommend this program for every student because it is site based. I use it for students who have not been able to learn reading phonemically. I think strategies used in this program could be used with a phonemic program like after reading a sentence doing what the sentence says, like clap your hands, etc.
ReplyDeleteHi Carlee,
ReplyDeleteI agree about connecting students' current learning to previous experiences. I guess the challenge is to create those experiences so that they have something to link new ones to as well as to learn about the experiences they may already have had. I know that in my own teaching, anything that I knew about the children's lives almost always made it easier to teach them because I knew what I could link to in their lives. Good thoughts!