Personal Theory of Learning

This course has helped greatly shape and change my personal learning theory for my students. The implementation of constructionism should greatly help my students learn concepts and retain the important information that they need to be successful. When students have a working knowledge of a topic they retain the information much better. Having students work together and communicate and interact they also better understand the information they have received.

Some adjustments I must make to effectively impact my studesnts are the use of non-linguistic representations and informational organizers. The use of summarizing strategies using non-linguistic approaches and organizers will be beneficial for students and greatly help them. To implement these strategies with technology I will use tool likes Microsoft Word to complete these instructional strategies. Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn & Malenoski show us that students saw great success using both the principle pattern summarizer and cause-effect pattern organizer(Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. 2007). The assignment I want to incorporate with the first technological instructional strategy is the passing of a bill into a law. I will teach the process prior to the assignment and then place the students into groups. This will add to the social learning aspect that students need to help them learn through interactions. We know that students are better able to create principle organizers to effectively describe their understanding because of they are more familiar with the topic (2007). The students will be able to graphically describe the concept using an organizational chart in Microsoft Word. The second idea I want to incorporate in the classroom to implement the instructional strategies is a cause and effect technological assignment. Here I want to use Microsoft’s Cause-Effect pattern organizers and small groups to complete this instructional strategy. The students will get into groups to create step-by-step organizers of a the election of the President from the primaries to the actual election. These strategies will allow students to see what they are thinking and can both be completed with non-linguistic symbols.

Two long-term goals I would like to achieve regarding technology integration in my classroom are to let student to build knowledge through the use of technological graphic organizers and to present more student-created activities in my classroom. Students can construct knowledge much more effectively when they are able to create an artifact using technology. I also would like to allow my students to research information for themselves instead of me giving them all of the information that they need. This will allow my students to retain more information and help other students understand the information better. I firmly believe that these strategies will improve my teaching and allow my students to master all of the skills that they need.

Jonathan Garrett

Resources:

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.