A) First and foremost studetns should learn to pay attention or to focus. Unlike physical skills That cn be performed by muscle memory, the mind can only focus on one thing during the learning process. Unforotunately some students have difficulty with the building block of learning. That is to be learned. The essential skill of paying attention on foucusing is the foundation for all learning.
If attention is being focused the student can begin the process of constucting information in a way that it can be organized and intergarted into the memprocess. To do this the student must encode or modify the informationso that it can be stored. Weather students understand the labels of declaritive or procedual knowledge is not important. What is important is that they understand some knowledge is "how things are" and some knowledge is "how things are."
B) In order to gain students attention a bell ringer or activating stradegy can be used. By getting the students attention or getting them focused as soon as they enter the room the chance that there will be productive behavior will quite possibly increase. If productive behavior increases chances are undesirable behavoir will be less.
Another tool of cognitive learningthat might help bring the class back to a learning enviroment would be a hands-on activity. An activity that teaces procedual knowledge is much more likely to keep the students engaged and likely to discourage undesirable behavior.
To futher bring the class to a pint of cooporation an activity that will ctivate their prior knowledge could be used. Because the students are confortable with what is being taught, they are more likely to participate in a meaningful manner. Such participation should also help to discourage the rowdy boys, the note passing, and the testing.
Attention and focus from students is extremely important when teaching as I'm sure you know! There are many activities and resources that can help gain the attention of students and activate their prior knowledge when entering and leaving the classroom. Having an activity students can work on when they enter your classroom before the lesson has started is a wonderful idea. This activity will help students achieve the frame of mind that you want your students to have before presenting the lesson: focus and willingness.
ReplyDeleteVideos are a wonderful activation tool when trying to grab the attention of students before and sometimes during lessons. When I taught my 4th grade practicum students how to solve math word problems, I had to review place value before the lesson. Rather than do the usual writing on the board and telling the different place values, we watched a video on place value and the students absolutely loved it! Videos work for grabbing the attention of students in any grade level.
Tickets out the door or prompting questions before students leave is also a great tactic for getting students engaged and thinking before your next lesson. Tickets out the door keep students engaged in your classroom because they usually ask questions such as, "What did you learn today?" or "What information surprised you during the lesson today?". Things like these keep students engaged in the classroom and let them know that you care about their individual learning process. This also allows them to think deeply about the content presented in the lesson that particular day (so the cognitive approach is there).
All of these activities keep students engaged and help to lesson difficult behaviors.
Noel, I am with you when you said that paying attention is an essential skill on the learning process. If students reach high levels of focus then all next step comes in some way “natural”. They can start decoding the new information, organizing it; making connections, and storage it more efficiently than if they are out of task. Then, reasoning and abstract thinking can be made based on the received information.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I do not think the point if to teach our students what is declarative knowledge or procedural knowledge, but what is important if that us, as teacher, understand how we can work with our students and instead of guide them in acquire declarative knowledge, we are able to give the students the right tools so they can use them when the learning process is taking place, generating a procedural knowledge which will last longer time in memory.
Attention is one of the most important tools a child can have. In preschool we try a variety of different approaches to teach children how to focus their attention to the task on hand. It is interesting to see attention in a preschool classroom because it is definitely taught in stages. In many of the classrooms that I have been in, the teachers have slowly increased the amount of time a child will spend on a certain topic. Without this baseline, it will be so much more difficult for a student to learn once they are older and being exposed to so much more information that becomes increasingly difficult. Having a bell or something similar to 'snap' a student's attention back is a great idea. Also, gaining the student's attention the moment they walk into the door is really important too. I remember that my history teacher in HS was VERY into beginning class the moment we sat down. Although it was tough, we knew what was expected of us and it made it easier to focus and get to work, rather than come in and sit down and become distracted and then fight to get back on task.
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