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?
There are several skills I want my students to be able to do that relate to cognitive learning. The first skill is that I want my students to be able to construct their own meaning and understanding. In addition, I want my students to be able to assimilate and accommodate new information in order to construct a better understanding of what they are learning. One of the more essential skills I want my students to be able to do is the process of equilibration due to the fact that this promotes more complex understanding and thoughts. Furthermore, I want my students to be able to take their constructed meaning and understanding of concepts and store it in their long-term memory. I think it is important for students to figure out what kind of learner they are and experiment with different strategies in order to find out what helps them to learn and understand most affectively. The earlier students start to do these essential skills, the better.
In addition to wanting my students to be able to do skills that relate to cognitive learning, I also want them to know certain things about cognitive learning to better their overall learning outcomes. For instance, I think it is important for my students to know that they are in control of their own cognitive processes. For instance, being aware of the importance of attention in terms of cognitive learning will cause them to create effective personal learning environments. An example of this could be that my student knows they are easily distracted when they sit near the door or when they sit next to their best friend. In theory, they would then make adjustments to this so that their attention is not bothered. However, I realize how hard this concept would be for elementary students. In addition, I also want my students to know about metamemory strategies and how they effect their learning outcomes. For example, some of my students will not be able to remember what we talk about during a lesson unless they write some of it down. Most importantly, I want my students to know that there are several factors that go into creating affective learning outcomes and the sooner they are aware of these factors the better their learning outcomes will be.
Below is an article on meta-attention for learning disabled and non-learning disabled children. When it comes to being aware of their attention, this study shows that younger children are more inclined to pay attention due to the effects of rewards and that older children are more inclined to pay attention due to their interest level.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1510613
I also discussed the importance of having students identify their own learning styles. I think that this identification will be a major motivating factor for students. If students realize that they are "good" at learning in a particular way, they will take steps to study and learn in a manner conducive to their personal learning styles.
ReplyDeleteI like that you addressed the challenge of addressing metacognition with younger elementary students. I think that verbalizing appropriate thinking processes, Think-Alouds, is one great way to teach young students how to think. These Think-Alouds will hopefully get students thinking about thinking (Metacognition).