Teaching Strategies: Learning Theory

INFORMATION PROCESSING

Introduction

v How much can your case study theoretically memorize? How do they store memories? Are memories ever really lost? What is the best way to remember information? Information processing theory attempts to answer these questions and explains how information is processed, stored, and retrieved in your students.

v In this assignment, you will apply information processing principals to teaching strategies in an effort to help your case study learn in your classroom and evaluate the information processing theory in the context of your own personal learning theory.

v Student example of this assignment is located in step 6.

Instructions

Click here to watch a video on how to do this assignment

Step 1: Describe a teaching strategy in your standards-based lesson plan that you think supports your case study’s learning via information processing theory.

v If you find that the teaching strategy in your lesson plan is missing, not specific enough, or is lacking in details, then this is a great opportunity to create, expand, or adapt your lesson instructions and make it better!

· For example, in our student lesson plan example from the previous assignment, step number 1 in the writing assignment, the author believes that this supports students’ learning via information processing theory:

o Teacher then asks students to think about the best beach in Hawai`i and to spend a few minutes in a free write describing that beach. Ask the students to try and use their 5 senses in their description to create a vision of that place. Teacher takes roll while students are writing

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Step 2: Defend why your teaching strategy will work to support your case study’s learning via information processing theory.

· To get you started in defending your teaching strategy, consider the following questions as a guide for your thinking, but you don’t have to address all of them. Please feel free to come up with your own approaches to help defend your teaching strategy.

o How does your teaching strategy in your lesson…

§ get students attention via their senses?

§ move information into their working memory?

§ Retain information in their working memory?

§ Move information into their long-term memory?

§ Retrieve information from their long-term memory?

§ Support higher order thinking?

· Review the resources below to provide you with the research behind the defense of your teaching strategy. You are welcome to use your own resources via other text, internet, etc., as long as you provide valid citations of where you got your answer.

Read Woolfolk Text

12^th Edition

· Read Text: p. 280- 312 – Cognitive Views of Learning (same topics as those listed in 11^th edition below)

a. Read Text: p. 236 -253 – The Importance of Knowledge in Learning

b. Sensory Memory and Attention

i. Read Text: p. 237-240 – Sensory Memory

ii. Teaching Strategies:

1. Read Text: p. 239 – Guidelines: Gaining and Maintaining Attention

c. Working Memory

i. Read Text: p. 240-243 – Working Memory

d. Long-Term Memory

i. Read Text: p. 243-253 – Long-Term Memory

ii. Teaching Strategies:

1. Read Text: p. 253 –256 - Reaching Every Student: Development of Declarative Knowledge

a. Meaningful

b. Visual Images and Illustrations

c. Mnemonics

d. Rote memorization

2. Read Text: p. 253 – Reaching Every Student: Development of Procedural Knowledge

3. Read Text: p. 258 – Table 7.3 – Top Ten Tips for a Better Memory

4. Read Text: p. 260 – Guidelines: Helping Students Understand and Remember

5. Read Text: p. 263 – Guidelines: Organizing Learning

e. Higher Order Thinking – Complex Cognitive Processes (p. 278-298)

a. Problem Solving

b. Creativity

c. Critical Thinking

d. Teaching for Transfer

· For example, in our student lesson plan example, here is how the author defends that the writing activity supports students’ learning via information processing theory:

o According to the Woolfolk text, Information Processing theory states that information can be processed only when it captures the students attention. Attention is dictated by what students find meaningful, so the idea of having students use each of their 5 senses to trigger old memories of their favorite beach will help create a powerful memory in their mind. Smelling the salt air, seeing the blue ocean, hearing the waves, and touching the sand recreates the senses used to regenerate memories of their favorite beach that they might have thought they lost. When these memories move to working memory, the students’ full attention is engaged as they seek to strengthen those memories and visualize the time and space of that memory.

Attention (Perception of Senses):

· Students look, listen, smell, and touch the information of the beach to help regenerate their memories of their favorite beach. They now pay attention to that memory.

Working Memory:

· Students maintain their favorite beach memory by continuing rehearsing the memory through their visualizations, which retrieves more memories of their favorite beach stored in their long-term memory.

Long-Term Memory:

· Students transfers their strengthened memory of their favorite beach into their long-term memory for later recall.

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Step 3: Choose an information processing teaching strategy below that you think helps students learn best and explain why you think it is the best strategy. This strategy should be different from the information processing strategy already identified and described previously in step 1 and 2.

v All of these information teaching strategies can be found in the Woolfolk text in Chapter 8 (12^th edition) and Chapter 7 (11^th edition)

o Gaining students attention, maintaining memory in working memory, developing long-term memory through meaningful association, visuals, mnemonics, rote memorization, and organizing information

· For example, here is how the author in the student example might answer:

o I think that meaningful association used in a lesson is one of the most effective informational processing teaching strategies because it connects old ideas with new ones. According to the Woolfolk text, memory grows when new information is associated with old information because it gives the student the necessary context in which to learn something new. For example, students that already have a strong background in their times-tables will be able to handle more complicated multiplication problems because they already have a solid background on how numbers can be multiplied together. That means that when you discuss new multiplication techniques, the students can place that new information into what they already know about multiplication problems. In this way, students don’t ever feel overwhelmed or confused because they have an idea of what you are talking about.

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Step 4: Based on the teaching strategy chosen above, incorporate that strategy into your standards-based lesson plan instruction.

· For example, here is how the author in the student example might answer:

o I will the meaningful association into my writing assignment as a way to connect why we need to be able to back up our opinions with what they do in their every day lives.

o The teacher points out that we all have opinions and that throughout our lives, in our personal lives and in our jobs we will be asked to support our opinions with supporting facts. So, this becomes a skill that is necessary to function well in society.

§ Have students brainstorm with a person sitting next to them different times when they have had to argue for something in their lives. Write some of these on the board and point out that supporting our opinions is something that we do every day as a normal part of our lives.

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Step 5: Choose an information processing teaching strategy above that you think doesn’t help students learn and explain why you think that this strategy is ineffective.

· For example, here is how the author in the student example might answer:

o I think that an ineffective behaviorist teaching strategy is rote or rehearsal memorization. According to the Woolfolk text, rehearsal memorization is often the least effective way of getting new information into long-term memory because it does not try to associate any of the new information to old information. If I want my students to learn how to write about a topic and back it up with their opinion, I could have them memorize the steps through rote memorization, but this doesn’t mean that they will remember it later on in their life. Instead, if I have my students learn how to back up their opinion with something they really care about, then it awakens old memories that get associated with new memories making it much easier to transfer into long-term memory. When students don’t care and learn by rote, then any new memories quickly fade because they don’t have anything to hook onto in the long-term memory.

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Step 6: Present and communicate your answers electronically and place in your standards-based lesson plan at the end of Part II (after your lesson instructions).

· Although a majority of you will defend your teaching strategy by writing a paragraph, there may be a few of you that may want to use other alternative media, and I want to support that and give you options to be creative. You may also use a combination of media to make your point. For example, you may combine some writing, with images, podcast, YouTube Video, PowerPoint, etc., to defend your teaching strategy.

· Keep in mind that any presentation method is valid as long as it clearly communicates and supports your answer. My only criteria for the type of media used is that the media is electronic and can be placed or linked successfully from your lesson plan.

· After you have completed your answers, then place it at the end of your standards-based lesson plan at the end of Part 2: Guiding the Learning (after your lesson instructions). Place a heading above your answer – Teaching Strategies: Learning Theory - Information Processing Theory

· See student example #1 as a model (go to the end of the lesson in Part 2: Guiding the Learning to view).

· When finished, go to the next section!