Week 4
Smart Learning Objectives
At the end of this workshop, students will be able to identify the key components of studying effectively with 90% accuracy.
At the end of this workshop, students will be able to define the peg method and mnemonic devices with 85% accuracy. At the end of this workshop, students will be able to define at least 3 specific ideas that teachers can use to teach students how to study effectively with 85% accuracy. |
Content Summary
Chapter Seven
Our brains are designed to be trained by each one of us. We are in control of how our brains work and how much they can retain as memory. We are not born with a given talent of learning easily or effectively remembering knowledge. We must teach our brains how to retain given information and what the output will look like when we recall that information.
We are in control of teaching our brains to master the content and recall it efficiently. We can do this by creating a memory map that will help put an image or mnemonic device with each thing that we are trying to learn and master. Remembering images with a given topic will help you recall it easier and more effectively for testing. Creating mnemonic devices also gives you a way to remember and retain the information so that it is easy to recall. Using these processes will help students learn that they are in control of their own learning and mastery of a given topic. Studies show that using images will help students create connections to what they are learning. If they are able to put an image to the information being taught, this will help the student retain the information, along with mastering the content. Students from a lower socioeconomic background need to have a earlier start on early childhood education. Studies have proven that an educational setting outside of the home before preschool has led to higher IQ's for those children (Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, 2014). There are other factors that lead to higher IQ's, like nutrition and affluent backgrounds. Students are in control of their own learning and we need to support that concept. We should not be telling students that they are just naturally smart because they do need to know that they can conquer any task given to them if they put effort into it. Students are able to use effort to master any concept, including things like sports, musical aspirations, their learning in the classroom, and other things that will help them be successful. |
Chapter Eight
Working with students to develop good study skills is critical. Some of the ideas given were already covered in chapters 1-7, but they were then summed up again here with specific examples.
Retrieval practice, spacing out your practice, interleaving your practice are the three main study skills that students should master. Elaboration, generation, reflection, and calibration are other important skills to teach students when teaching study skills. Retrieval practice is best when you space out your practice, which means you should be studying as you go through the unit. Ways to do this are to make sure that you quiz yourself on the chapter response questions and make sure that you do this as you are reading the chapters. Make sure that you keep referring to this knowledge as you go through other chapters as well. Make sure to have students relate the previous learning to the new learning by questioning what the two chapters have in common or how they are related. These connections are critical for long-term retrieval. Interleaving is also critical in retrieval practice so that you are mastering all skills in all the learning that you are doing. Do not just study one chapter and forget all of that knowledge, keep that information fresh in your mind as you add new information to that. Creating these connections and keeping this knowledge fresh in your mind will help you master the content. Elaboration is the process of finding additional layers of meaning in new material (Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, 2014). Generation is an attempt to answer a questions or solve a problem before being shown the answer or the solution (Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, 2014). Reflection is the act of taking a few minutes to review what has been learned in a recent class or experience and asking yourself questions (Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, 2014). Calibration is the act of aligning your judgments of what you know and don't know with objective feedback so as to avoid being carried off by the illusions of mastery that catch many learners by surprise at test time (Brown, Roediger III, & McDaniel, 2014). These are related to the three most important strategies, but a little different. Teachers should be using a lot of quizzing in the classroom along with testing prior to learning new material. These can be spelling pre-tests or just exit tickets. Teachers should not make them worth a lot of points, but make sure that students get some credit for these. Create study groups for students to work together to master concepts. Students can teach each other sometimes better than teachers can teach students. Another thing that teachers can do is to use Bloom's Taxonomy to create questions and quizzes that have higher level questions that make students make the connections and the inferences, this will help with retention and mastery of the content. |
Carol Dweck: Mindset- The new psychology of success
There are two types of mindsets talked about in this video: fixed mindset and growth mindset. Fixed mindset is when students get praised for being naturally smart and not for their effort. The growth mindset is when students are praised for their effort given toward a task. Fixed mindsets are not what we want our students to have. Teachers should be praising students for their efforts because this causes students to get less frustrated with difficult tasks and they do not feel as inadequate for completing that task. Students mindsets can also be changed, so we can create more effective learners and more involved students. Growth mindset students will have more of a positive attitude toward learning and get less frustrated when given harder tasks. She also discusses that students that have the growth mindset are more happy in their educational experience and are absent less often, as well as, have a better attitude toward school in general. |
Connection to Field and/or Discipline
As a co-teacher last year, we implemented using Quizlet and Kahoot as pre-testing games that gave us critical information on how much information our students already knew about the testing questions. We used the Sadlier-Connect website, which had different type of games and resources for the students to use. This website was connected to the vocabulary workshop books that our students used. These were easy, quick and fun ways for students to quiz before the test and make sure that they were prepared for the test the next day. We also made Jeopardy games that were aligned with the material that the test would be covering. Our students did much better on the tests when we had the quizzes the day prior. I did notice that once we implemented these resources, our students did not struggle as frequently on the exams at the end of the week.
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Suggestions for Implementation
In my classroom, I plan to start using more bell ringers, exit tickets, along with more quizzes throughout the lesson. This will help me see where the students have mastered a skill and where they still need practice. I plan to implement using Quizlet as a resource for them to create flash cards. I plan to start teaching students proper ways of studying. Chapter eight really helped give me some great examples of how to do this with my students. I am already implementing it with my own daughter, she got a much better grade on chapter 2 test in science versus her grade on chapter one test. This seems to really help her and I am already seeing results, so I plan to implement immediately with my students.
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Formative Assessment
References
Brown, P. C., Roediger III, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.