PLE Post #9

How might self-efficacy and self-regulation contribute to the intervention plans you use in your case study?

My case study is about Lisa, a third grade student who is disruptive and uncooperative when working in heterogenous small groups that meet at least twice a day. Although the group composition changes about every four weeks, Lisa does not seem to get along with any of her peers. The group that Lisa is currently working with is having a hard time grasping the material and completing their project in an acceptable manner because Lisa is so disruptive. She gets angry with her group mates when she does not get the job she wants and refuses to complete her section of the project. She also constantly interrupts other group members and does not pay attention when her group prepares for class presentations.

Self-efficacy is very important for elementary students to have because it is their self-constructed believe about whether they feel competent enough to perform tasks. One way I would incorporate self-efficacy into Lisa's intervention plan is to include a lot of verbal encouragement to help build her confidence. When Lisa actively participates in her group I will say things such as, "That is a great idea Lisa!" or "I really like how Lisa is participating in her group!" Another way I will help improve Lisa's self-efficacy is by working with her to create small attainable goals. My hope is that once Lisa realizes she can achieve these goals, her self-efficacy will increase and she will start setting higher goals for herself including fully participating in group projects. The final way I will help improve Lisa's self-efficacy after I get her participating in a group is by putting her in a group with my highest achieveing students. One way students can gain self-efficacy is by succeeding in a group setting. I think putting Lisa in a successful group and having her experience success will help improve her confidence and will hopefully motivate her to participate more in a group setting.

Self-regulation is another very important skill for elementary students to have. Self-regulation involves setting goals, monitoring and evaluating our own cognitive processes, and imposing consequences for our successes and failures. One way I would incorporate self-regulation into Lisa's intervention plan is by having her set small attainable goals for herself. As I stated earlier, this will help Lisa's self-efficacy. Surprisingly, it will also help improve her self-regulation because a large part of regulating our behaviors is making sure we know what our goals for the behavior are. The second way I would help improve Lisa's self-regulation is by having her think metacognitively about her work. I would schedule a conference with Lisa and ask her to explain how she views group work and how she thinks through her sections of the group work. I think this will help with Lisa's self-regulation because it will give her a chance to evaluate her cognitive processes and become more aware of why she struggles with group work. The final way I will try to improve Lisa's self-regulation is by having her write down a list of consequences for herself. These consequences will outline what happens if Lisa does her group work efficiently and what happens if she does not. My hope is that Lisa will internalize these consequences and will  one day no longer need to write out consequences for herself.

The website that I found for this week's post is found at http://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/affective/efficacy.html. This website describes self-efficacy, tells how students can improve their self-efficacy, lists pedogogical strategies for improving self-efficacy from some of the most well-known psychologists like Bandura, lists teaching practices to avoid, includes tips for improving self-efficacy for struggling students, explains the importance of teacher self-efficacy, and gives websites and journals for further reading. I really like this website because it includes a lot of information about self-efficacy and it is scholarly. I also think this could be a useful resource for our CSEL.

Barb Rentenbach Presentation

This past Friday I went to the lecture by Barb Rentenbach. When I went into the presentation, I thought it was going to be like every other lecture that I have gone to: informative yet mostly expository. Once the presentation began, I was absolutely fascinated. Barb Rentenbach has a severe form of autism but she has not let it negatively impact her life. Even though she is almost completely mute and needs an assistant to help her overcome her apraxia, she has spent the past ten years writing a full-length book about her thoughts and experiences as a person with autism. Although I am now ashamed to admit it, I was surprised to see how intelligent and witty Rentenbach is despite her disability. She helped me realize that, even though I do not mean to, I do have certain preconceived notions about people with disabilities. In my special education class, we always talk about seeing the individual and not the disability. This presentation helped me see who Rentenbach truly is and helped me realize that I need to work on not judging people because of their disabilities, even if it is unintentional.

During the presentation I kept thinking, "What would Retenbach's life be like if there were no computers or iPads?" The image in my head was really disheartening because without these mediums, Retenbach would never be able to communicate with other people or express herself. This would be unfortunate for Retenbach as well as the rest of the world because we would never be able to experience how insightful and comical she truly is.

Retenbach’s lecture also made me think a lot about my future students with autism. First, it helped me realize that I do not need to assume that a child has a cognitive delay just because they have a disability. Before I met Retenbach, I had always assumed children with autism also had mental impairments. Seeing how intelligent and insightful Retenbach is forever changed the way I see autism, and I will not make the same assumptions ever again. The second thing from Retenbach’s lecture that really affected me was when she said that autism is her prism, not her prison. This helped me understand that I do not need to treat my student’s autism as a disability that holds them back, but instead as their unique way of seeing the world. I think Retenbach was saying that it is important for me to respect my student’s viewpoints instead of pitying them for being different. As she said in her presentation, neurodiversity is a good thing and I need to respect it. Finally, Retenbach’s lecture made me realize that I need to make sure all of my future students with autism are given the chance to try using computers or iPads to see if they too can better express themselves with technology. Retenbach’s life was drastically changed with the invention of the iPad, and I want to make sure all of my students with autisms are given opportunities to see how they can best express themselves.  

PLE Post 8

 

My CSEL intervention case study is about Lisa, a third grade student who is disruptive and uncooperative when working in small groups. These groups are heterogeneous  and usually meet at least twice a day. Although the group composition changes about every four weeks, Lisa does not seem to get along with any of her peers. The group that Lisa is currently working with is having a hard time  grasping the material and completing their project in an acceptable manner because Lisa is so disruptive. She gets angry with her group mates when she does not get the job she wants and refuses to complete her section of the project. She also constantly interrupts other group members and does not pay attention when her group prepares for class presentations.

 

Fortunately, there are tools from a behaviorist view that can encourage Lisa's productive behaviors. The first tool I could use to help encourage Lisa's productive behaviors is positive reinforcement. During small groups, I would monitor Lisa's participation and reward her when she is on task and working well with the other members. For example, if Lisa contributes to her group's discussion, I could verbally reward her by saying, "That's a great idea Lisa! Keep up the good work!"  If Lisa does not respond to this type of reinforcement, I could try giving her stickers or some other reward to help get her motivated to work in her group. The second tool I could use to help encourage Lisa's productive behaviors is negative reinforcement. For example, I could make an agreement with Lisa that if she cooperates and does her part of the project, she can skip any five math problems she wants on her homework. Although this seems like bribery to me personally, behaviorists do support this type of approach.

 

There are also tools from a behaviorist view that can discourage Lisa's undesirable behaviors. The first tool I could use to stop Lisa's disruptive behaviors is negative punishment. For example, I would tell Lisa that for every day she refuses to be a productive member of her group, she will have to sit out for recess. The second tool I could use to discourage Lisa's current behaviors is presentation punishment. For example, I could make Lisa sit in the front of the class right next to my desk every time she refuses to work with her group.

 

From what we have learned in our Educational Psychology class so far, from a constructivist view, Lisa has not yet constructed her own understanding of why group work is important. One way to help this is by having a meeting with her where the two of you can talk about it one-on-one. I think it is important to ask her why she does not value group work, and why she does not want to cooperate in a group. One possible answer is that she had a bad experience with group work in her second grade classroom and individually constructed the view that group work is not beneficial for her. Once Lisa has explained her view, it is then my job as a teacher to help her socially construct a new view on cooperative learning groups. We can do this by brainstorming how small groups help students learn and what the best ways are to interact in a group so everyone can benefit. 

 

Constructivist and behaviorist tools differ greatly. I think the biggest difference between the two is that the behaviorist tools focus more on changing the environment and giving the student rewards or punishments, whereas the constructivist tools focus more on the student and how they see the world. I think the benefits of behaviorist tools are that they work with most students so they are easy to think of. I think the benefits of constructivist tools, on the other hand, are that they are child-centered and are unique for each student's needs. These benefits can also be seen as deficits for the theories because one of the greatest drawbacks of the behaviorist tools are that they do not focus on each unique student, whereas one of the biggest drawbacks of constructivist tools is that they can be more time-consuming because you have to figure out what specific tools you need to use for each unique child in each unique situation. In my future classroom, I will probably handle the everyday problems using the behaviorist tools because they are fast and effective. If my class is being too loud in the hallways, I am not going to analyze how each student constructs their knowledge about hallway etiquette but will instead give my class silent lunch. Conversely, if I have one student who is consistently difficult, like Lisa, I think I would like to sit down and talk with them about why they are misbehaving. In my future classroom, I would like to use the constructivist tools when I am trying to work with students individually.

My resource for this week's post is from the website http://vccslitonline.cc.va.us/usingweb/bckgrnd.htm. My favorite thing about this resource is that it has a graphic comparing behaviorism, constructivism, and cognitivism. I know a lot of us are still a little confused on the main differences between these three learning theories, and I thought this graphic would be really helpful to reference when we write our CSEL. It tells each theory's proponents, applications, instructional design focuse, the view of the learner, its assets, and its implications.

PLE Post 7

Think of an activity or lesson component that explicitly teaches one or more metacognitive and one or more problem solving skills.

One reading lesson activity that can be used to explicitly teach both a metacognitive and a problem solving skill is summarizing. Summarizing is a really important skill for students to have because it allows them to remember what they have just read without memorizing every line. As a future teacher, I think summarizing is an important yet difficult skill to teach. Fortunately, I have learned that this skill can be taught by teaching students to think critically and use the RAP-Q heuristic.

As Sarah and I explained in our PowerPoint presentation, there are six levels of critical thinking. Summarizing is a critical thinking skill listed under "Level Two: Comprehension." To teach students how to summarize, I would have them read a short story and brainstorm what ideas or sentences from the reading they believe are the most important. While the students brainstorm, I would use a lot of questioning to help them think metacognitively about why they are including certain sentences in the summary and not others. For this discussion, my goal is for students to gain a deeper understanding of why we summarize and how this affects what information we include. 

Summarizing can also be taught using the RAP-Q heuristic that I found at a website entitled "The Learning Toolbox" (http://coe.jmu.edu/Learningtoolbox/strategies.html). This heuristic is used to help students understand the main ideas of what they read, which will help them remember the main points that they need to include in their summary. For this heuristic, students simply need to remember to follow each step of RAP-Q. First, they need to Read a section of the story. Next, they Ask themselves what the main idea was and Put the main idea in their own words. Finally, students write a Question for the section and answer it on the back of an index card so they can flip through them later to see how all the main ideas are connected in the story. In my summarizing activity, I would explicitly teach students how to use the RAP-Q method and would remind them to use it whenever they are having trouble summarizing a story.

For my resource this week, I decided to share the website where I found the RAP-Q heuristic (http://coe.jmu.edu/Learningtoolbox/strategies.html). This is a great resource for us to use in our future classrooms because it has many unique and easy-to-remember heuristics that we can use to help our students problem-solve. The website contains heuristics for organization, test taking, study skills, note taking, reading, writing, math, and advanced thinking.