Cognitivism in Practice

To better understand and apply cues and questions, one must know the connection between the two. Cues are clear reminders or hints about what the students have experienced or are about to experience throughout the lesson. Questions are similar in that they activate students’ prior knowledge, so connections could be made (Pitler, et al., 2007). When these instructional strategies are used along with advanced organizers, students could effectively be actively engaged and build meaningful connections to concepts and prior knowledge. As a result, it is easier for students to recall, use, and organize information about a topic. Whether the lesson at hand calls for taking notes, summarizing, or just understanding a concept, different, if not all, cognitive tools are useful.

                       

Cues, questions, advanced organizers, as well as note taking and summarizing, relate to the principles of cognitive learning theories. Based on an online article, “Definitions of Cognitive Learning”, this type of learning is about enabling people to learn by using their reason, intuition and perception (Smith, 2006).  As a student takes notes, it is their perception and reasoning about the reading material that helps them to highlight the important information. Another online source suggests that cognitive learning is how humans process information (Fritscher, 2011). When teachers provide straightforward cues, higher-ordered questions, in addition to expository, narrative, and graphic advanced organizers, the information is organized in such a way that mimics how one may process and learn information. Cognitive tools, such as concept maps and virtual field trips also assist in building connections between ideas and to background knowledge. Mapping out how one thinks or processes information enhances students’ memories and applications of the knowledge gained; therefore creating more effective lessons.

These instructional strategies have already helped me to enhance my instruction in the classroom. The lessons I have planned for the upcoming week. I planned to differentiate my instruction further by integrating Microsoft Excel into my lesson on probability. The students will be organizing the outcomes on a virtual pair of dice and programming the spreadsheet to calculate the sum of the numbers rolled. Every time the student’s desired sum is rolled, the cell is highlighted in a color of their choice; the students will also be programming the spreadsheet to accomplish this task. Programming the spreadsheet further, it will calculate the experimental probability of their desired sum. As a result, their data will be visually organized and I could begin using cues and questions through our classroom blog to analyze and summarize their obtained statistics. There is much more to this lesson that has already been accomplished.

           

Because I have recently researched additional effective instructional strategies in short, these summarizing and advancing organizing techniques have already enhanced my lesson on probability. For next year, I will plan further to create a lesson that allows students to complete a concept map illustrating the differences between Theoretical and Experimental Probability and even how these two types of probabilities could relate to each other.

In short, utilizing various cognitive tools along with differentiated teaching strategies, such as cues, questions, advanced strategies, note taking, and summarizing , could trigger assist students in focusing and enhancing their learning experiences.

Jacquelyn Caleinte

Here is a site that I absolutely love!:

Instructional Strategies Online

References:

Fritscher, L. (April 12, 2011). “Cognitive theory”. New York Times. Retrieved from

            http://phobias.about.com/od/glossary/g/cognitivethedef.htm.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with

            classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Smith, M. (May 2012). “Definition of Cognitive Learning”. Ezine Articles. Retrieved

            from http://ezinearticles.com/?Definition-of-Cognitive-Learning&id=365039.