Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Program One "Almost Adults"

a. What was the most important information you learned from the video?
b. How does this new information affect your understanding of AYA students?
c. How might you apply what you have learned to your next field placement?

a./b.   I feel as though as lot of the information in this film has been covered through either my education or psychology courses.  However,  the one section of this film that I really found important is the part about brain anatomy.  It gives reason behind the actions or lack their of for the students that I will be seeing once I enter a classroom.  The fact that the emotional sector of the brain is in full function but the frontal lobe which controls reasoning and other complexities is just starting to form itself.  The idea of pruning sort of combines nature and nurture.  The students naturally create the neuro-connections but what they do in life can make one of them strong and others weak.  This is extremely important because being an educator during this point in their lives it is important for me to help the students to create complex thinking abilities as well as creating an environment to help them express themselves.  

c.  For my next field placement I intend on taking the history/psychology teacher's advice in making the content more personal.  Relating them to events that happened so many years ago or comparing something today to a recent event.  This program also reinforced the idea of having a safe environment for my students.  When students are concerned with the way they look or what others think about them they are distracted and it greatly affects their ability to learn.  One of the big keys in this film was the use of active learning, having the students participate in their education.  A teacher just spitting information to students is not the way that they learn best.  I understand that in several classes, especially history, there has to be time taken to give the students information before they can start to think about it.  I had a field placement for Ed. 300 and the English teacher I was with had a nice strategy going.  She allowed the students to do a writing piece then showed them their literacy rating.  Now they are doing a project in which they are creating a magazine article using several writing strategies that the teacher hasn't explained to them.  She is using this as a learning experience for the students to go through and will go back and explain.  Based on the way her students react in class and their want to learn I have to say that it looks successful.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Excellent ideas. I encourage you to develop them further for field next semester.