Ch. 7 learning log

What?
This chapter is on knowledge construction. It starts off asking you to think back to a time when you tried to carry on a conversation with someone in a noisy room. You weren’t probably able to hear everything they were saying, but you were able to get the gist of the message by combining what you did hear with things you could see and things you already knew about the topic under discussion. We have the constructive processes in learning and memory. Within that we have construction in storage. Construction in retrieval, and knowledge construction as a social process.
From there you are then using the organizing knowledge. You use it by concepts, schemas and scripts, theories, and worldviews. In order to promote effective knowledge construction we need to provide opportunities for experimentation, present experts’ perspectives, emphasize conceptual understanding, promoting classroom dialogue, assigning authentic activities, scaffolding theory construction and creating a community of learners.
However there are many challenges with conceptual change. We need to be careful with confirmation bias. We need to have diversity in constructive processes. We can do this by accommodating students with special needs.

So What?
It is important to know about how your brain organizes things and the different ways it does it. You do this with your different concepts, schemas and scripts. As you teach you need to help the students engage in the different ways of learning and have them be constantly relating their new information with the old information. They learn things by having it repeated and put into their daily scripts. They will soon know things and remember it just as easy as they know how to ride a bike.


Now What?
After knowing about the importance oh how students learn. We need to make sure that as we are teaching our students that we relate things to their previous knowledge so that they have the schema to go with it. That will help them in remembering things better. They can see how this new subject can relate to their old background. We want all the information and learning the students do to become part of their script. I hope to have my students remember all the information the learn and have it come to them as easy as riding a bike is for them. I hope to have the information easily learned and able to retrieve easily!