Amberly Austin Ed Psych

Miss. F is definitely a constructive teacher.  When I first started observing her class I noted that she doesn't spend very much time lecturing her kids.  Much of the activities they do in class are centered on working together to solve problems.  There was one particular day when Miss. F sent the students on an adventure.  They were in the middle of a Huck Finn unit and loved it.  They were able to collaborate together in small groups and go on an adventure anywhere on school grounds.  Once they returned to class they were asked to reflect on the experience and write a short personal narrative.  It was so interesting to hear them return from their adventure excited and enthusiastic to write their narrative.  In this particular instance, and often in class I have noticed that Miss. F does not do a great job of mentoring the students.  For instance, with this Huck Finn adventure she simply went inside the classroom and waited for the students to come back.  The lesson would have b

Miss. F. truly does focus on Growth Mindset.  One of her biggest motivators is to show her students their learning progress so that they can recognize what they do well and what they can improve on.  She teaches resource students and one of her main goals is to help eliminate learned helplessness and get students to believe they can do something well.  The students are required to write an argument paper in her class and she has decided to teach it to them piece by piece.  Without students knowing she sets a growth centered goal and helps them realize that goal.  About midway through the year she asks them to write an essay and then passes out their old essays and has them compare and contrast.  The students were amazed at their progress.  Most of them did not even realize how much they had grown as writers and how their writing has improved.  They truly are able to see their progress through this activity.  Honestly, Miss F. doesn't do much with Maslow and that is something that I

For the most part in my observations I have noted that students are primarily in the Identity v. Role Confusion stage of Erikson's model.  This is a very interesting stage of developmental crisis because it is essentially the stage of life where students are trying to figure out who they are, and what they want to do with their lives. It is also very interesting to me how these stages build on each other.  If students are struggling with Industry v. Inferiority and don't have confidence in themselves it can be that much harder for them to develop a role in society.  Likewise, it is interesting to see how those students who have successfully completed the industry v. inferiority stage are better equipped to lead those around them.  Marcia's theory fits in well with this because each of these phases  include different aspects of identity and as Marcia points out these phases are constantly being negotiated or tried.  I like this because unlike Erikson Marcia's theory seem

This is an interesting way to think about teaching.  Miss. F does a good job of getting students attention and accessing their sensory memory.  During one particular class she handed out a magazine for students to find evidence in support of an argument on the article.  First she showed them how to do this by using an example.  After she had modeled the behavior and accessed their sensory memory and then working memory she had them do the activity for themselves.  This was a great way to encode the process of finding support for your argument into the students minds because they got to practice it for themselves.  One way that I think Miss. F could help encode the process further into students minds is space out her instruction time and allow students to practice over a longer period.  I think this added element would help move the information from students' working memory to the long-term memory. Like I said I think more practice over time would help students to further encode t

For the last observation I did Miss. F introduced a new assignment to the students.  It was interesting to watch her introduce this new assignment to the kids and see them react to it.  This was a good example to me of disequilibrium because the kids had to grasp that they were being asked to do a new assignment.  The assignment was neat as well because it asks students to draw on an assignment they have done previously.  Essentially what Miss. F wants them to do in this case is create a movie poster critiquing an article they wrote an essay about in class.  After she gave instructions and allowed the kids to begin working I noticed a lot of assimilation and adaptation going on.  Students were assimilating what was required and connecting it to the ideas they had already written about in their essay.  Additionally accommodation was required because Miss. F had asked the students to use a program on the computer that they had to learn.  This program was brand new.  It was neat to watch

Vygotsky is all about learning socially and that is something I feel is very important in the classroom. When a teacher can effectively identify their students zone of proximal development (ZPD) they can more effectively teach their class by providing scaffolding, using cultural tools and signs, and understanding the importance of language. While observing my cooperating teacher I have found that effectively teaching this way is a lot more difficult than it looks.  Miss. F's (I use an initial to respect the teacher's identity) class is small in first period and the students are often groggy and tired as it is the first period of the day.  Even with all of these contributing factors Miss. F does a great job of teaching kids within their ZPD.  She effectively gives them examples and models learning for them so that they are then able to do it themselves. One example of this was when she had them identify points of of an argument in an article.  She had one student read a sect