Chapter 6 Question 1

What are the essential skills and/or learning outcomes you want your students to know and be able to do that relate to cognitive learning?

Cognitive learning theory discusses how learners acquire knowledge and store it in memory. I actually took a cognitive psychology class last year where we discussed cognitive learning in detail, and I really enjoyed learning about this unique theory. For my future students, one particular essential skill that relates to cognitive learning that I would like them to know would be how to commit things to long-term memory. As a teacher, it is my job to present the material in an interesting way so students will pay enough attention to take in the stimuli from the environment. Next, it is up to the students to store the information in sensory information long enough for it to move into working memory where they will need to rehearse and encode the information enough for it to become a long-term memory. Another learning outcome that I would want my students to be able to do that is related to cognitive learning is to reflect metacognitively on their learning. I want my future students to be aware of their learning and know exactly what they do and do not understand. I think this is a really important skills for students to have because they will know when they do not understand something and when they need to ask for clarifications.

I think we may all still be a little confused on how this theory would actually look in a classroom, so I found a web page this week that gives an introduction to cognitive learning theory, an example of how it would look in a lesson plan format, and resources you can use to incorporate the theory in your classroom.
http://erincunia.com/portfolio/MSportfolio/ide621/ide621f03production/cognitive.htm