PLE #10

Theories in educational psychology promote the idea that language plays a critical role in cognitive development. Examine table 2.2 (p.51), paying particular attention to the age range that you are interested in teaching. Consider how you might incorporate or adapt the strategies presented for use with your own students. 

Jeanne Ellis Ormrod's book "Educational Psychology: Developing Learners" states that many contemporary theorists share the beliefs of Piaget and Vygotsky that acquiring language is possibly the most important factor in cognitive development. Furthermore, Ormrod's book discusses how a child's language development is also affected by their environment. The richer the language that children hear at younger ages, the faster their vocabulary develops. In addition, some theorists believe that heredity also plays a role in a child's language development. However, what I find to be most interesting is that children use what they hear to construct their own understanding of language, which aligns with a constructivist view of learning. Children do not just absorb the language spoken around them, they develop their own understanding of what words mean, the rules governing how words are combined into meaningful sentences, etc. through their own experiences and observations.

Children have different linguistic characteristics and abilities at different grade/age levels. I am interested in teaching K-2. Linguistic characteristics and abilities at these grade levels include:
     - Knowledge of 8,000 to 14,000 words by age 6
     - Difficulty understanding complex sentences
     - Overdependence on word order and context when interpreting messages
     - Superficial understanding of being a good listener
     - Literally interpret messages and requests
     - Increasing ability to tell a story
     - Mastery of most sounds, but some difficulty pronouncing r, th, dr, sl, and str
     - Occasional use of regular word endings with irregular words
     - Basic etiquette in conversations
     - Reluctance to initiate conversations with adults

Ormrod's book provides suggested strategies to use at these grade levels to aid in the linguistic development of students. These strategies are something that I will be able to incorporate and adapt in my classroom. One strategy presented is to read age-appropriate storybooks to enhance the vocabulary of my students. For this, I would make sure that all of the books provided in our class library are age-appropriate for my students in order to meet my students at their existing vocabulary. In addition, I will also provide books that may incorporate new words that my students are unfamiliar with to further build their vocabularies. I will tell my students that any time they see a word they are unfamiliar with while reading to look that word up in the dictionary and write the word, its definition, and a sentence using that word in their vocabulary journals that we will be building throughout the school year. I will also incorporate the use of a word wall in my classroom where my students and I will display new vocabulary words, discuss these words, practice using these words in real-world contexts, and recite these words. Furthermore, I will provide books that are age appropriate that use more complex sentence structure to further challenge my students' linguistic abilities. Encouraging students to read is also important because children and adolescents learn many new words through reading than they do other activities. Therefore, it is important to provide a print-rich environment for my students to enhance their vocabularies.

Another strategy suggested is to have students construct narratives about recent events. This provides practice on their ability to tell a story, write sentences using correct word order and sentence structure, and incorporate new vocabulary words into their daily language. I will use this strategy in all subject matters in my classroom through writing portfolios and journals. Each week, I plan to introduce new vocabulary words to my students and have them practice using the words throughout the week in order to store the words in their long-term memory. I want my students to write about their own personal experiences because it makes their learning relate to their own lives and therefore will increase the chances of my students using new vocabulary words in their every day language. In addition, practice makes perfect and providing my students with ample opportunities to write will result in enhancing their vocabulary and their ability to write clear and meaningful sentences in a variety of contexts.

Another important strategy Ormrod suggests for these grade levels is to give corrective feedback when students' use of words indicate inaccurate understandings. Since my students will be at very young ages of development, they will continue to refine their understandings of words. Therefore, it is very important that I pay close attention to my students' speech and written work to pickup on any misconceptions my students might have about word meanings and correct these misconceptions. In their written work, I will correct their tendency to use regular word endings on irregular words and provide the class explicit instruction on this area if I notice more than a couple of students making the same mistakes. In addition, I will provide practice for my students in learning centers and in whole group instruction on correctly pronouncing words with the r, th, dr, sl, and str sounds. By addressing misconceptions at a younger grade level, I am preventing my students from constructing an incorrect understanding of language.

Ormrod also suggests the strategy of working on listening skills with your students. This will definitely be incorporated into my classroom because being active listeners is an important skill for students to learn. Active listeners use their whole body to focus and realize that good listening requires understanding what is being said and not just sitting quietly. I will have a poster in my class that illustrates what active listeners do to remind my students how I expect them to act. In addition, I will test their listening skills by asking a student to repeat back to me the instructions I have given them in their own words or to summarize an event in their own words during one of our read-alouds.

The last strategy suggested is to ask follow-up questions to make sure your students accurately understand important messages. Since students at these grade levels have the tendency to make literal interpretations of messages and requests (e.g. Your eyes are bigger than your stomach to literally mean that their eyes are larger than their stomach), it is important to check their actual understanding. I will ask my students questions during read-alouds to check for their understanding of the stories and will also incorporate questioning in other subject areas as well to make sure my students actually understand the meaning of different topics, messages, words, etc.