Constructionism in the classroom

This week, we learned about constructionism and what that means for the classroom. From what I understand, constructionism involves learning through creating a project of some type. I think that one way to support this is by making rubrics. I like the idea of rubrics because it clearly outlines what is expected. This way, if there is ever a question of the grades, the teacher can simply refer to the rubric and that's that. I think that if you expect your students to learn by creating something, it might be best to give them a clear list of what you expect. Has anyone used rubrics in your classroom? Has it had a positive or negative impact on your teaching?

Tools used to support the cognitive learning approach

The cognitive approach is all about how information enters the brain, is stored, and is used. In order to support this, their are several different tools that can be used. I think that it is a great idea to create advance organizers. This can easily be created on a word document. One type of advance organizers is a graphic organizer which can be represented as a table, chart, or artistic work. I think that this supports the cognitive approach by giving a clear way for information to enter the brain. I am a visual learner and so are many of my students so seeing some sort or chart or graph is very helpful.

Strategies to Incorporate the Behaviorist Learning Theory in the Classroom

For this week, I am going to talk about a strategy that I learned about. According to Dr. Michael Orey in a video I watched, the behaviorist theory involves either reinforcing a desired behavior or punishing a negative behavior. One way that this could be incorporated in a classroom is to use an online tutorial. A tutorial is a program on a computer that gives a small piece of information and asks you a question (usually multiple choice). If you get the answer correct, you get rewarded with a screen that says either "Correct!" or "You're right!" or some other positively reinforcing statement. If you are wrong, you get a screen that pretty much states the opposite. My district requires staff to do training for things like fire safety and communicable diseases by using tutorials. I would love to find some tutorials to reinforce learning topics for my students. I think that they would get a lot out of them.

References:
Orey, M. (2009) "Behaviorist Learning Theory." (video resource)

Hello again!

If anyone has been following my blog, I apologize for not submitting a posting for a couple months. I have to admit, I created this blog to fulfill a requirement for a class I am taking and now that I have to post to a blog for another course, I'm back. I hope to get into the swing of using this even when I do not have to.

For those of you who are subscribers of my blog for our current course, welcome. I hope to be getting comments from you soon!