Blog 2_Ch 1 Why Don’t Students Like School? & Ch 2 How Can I Teach Students the Skills They Need When Standardized Tests Require Only Facts?_Melissa Lochner: Literary Luminator
A passage from the first chapter that caught my attention was on page ten, half way into the first paragraph. It said, “When you solve a problem, your brain may reward itself with a small dose of dopamine, a naturally occurring chemical that is important to the brain’s pleasure system.” Later in the next paragraph it talks about how “working on a problem with no sense that your making progress is not pleasurable.” This idea fits right into the classroom. When students do not feel a sense of accomplishment they feel like the problem is to hard and they will shut down. By making, not easier, but more achievable problems that fit their learning style, the students will feel this reward of pleasure.
Another Passage in the first chapter that I marked was on page 20, fourth line down from the top. “Overloads of working memory are caused by such things as multistep instructions, lists of unconnected facts, chains of logic more than two or three steps long, and the application of a just-learned concept to new material.” When I read this my thought was that ‘this is what is happening in every classroom right now.’ If this is what is holding students back from grabbing the concept or ideas that they are supposed to be learning, then teachers need to readjust their lesson activities to prevent working memory overload.
There were many passages that caught my attention in “ah-ha” moments but the last one I chose to write about is on page 27 in chapter 2, third line up from the bottom. Willingham mentions something that we have all heard before, “You don’t need to have this information memorized--you can always just look it up.” This may be true for high schoolers or adults but for younger students they should learn to memorize some information. They need a base to their education, and mentioned later in the chapter they need background knowledge which they would not have in their later years of school if they were able to look everything up, and not memorize information, when they were younger.
Melissa I think your last point is so important. In my other class we discuss the relationship between poverty and the achievement gap. Where students in low income families tend to struggle more in school. This is because they come to school with less information in storage because they often have not been given as many opportunities to experience and learn new things as students in more well off families. This gap only contintues to widen as the children develop because they were behind from the very start.
ReplyDeleteNatalie Gregorski
Your second paragraph, I think, Is so important. It is true that students can have problems with all of these different things. I see it with my 10th graders everyday. Teachers tell students 4 or 5 different things to do and they can only remember the first 2. I also agree with Natalie, as future teachers we have to come up with ways to help students from poverty achieve the same as students who are from well off families.
ReplyDeleteStacey
“Overloads of working memory are caused by such things as multistep instructions, lists of unconnected facts, chains of logic.."
ReplyDeleteAll students benefit by learning in context with connections to previous learning. What an excellent passage to remind us of this.
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