Intervention Plans.

How might self-efficacy and self-regulation contribute to the intervention plans you use in your case study?

Self-efficacy and self-regulation are going to contribute greatly to the intervention plans I plan on using within my case study.  As you are probably familiar, Willard, who continually wanders around and out of the classroom and continually asks questions; is who I will be basing my thoughts off of.  

In terms of self-efficacy I think this will be a continual skill that we work on with Willard.  As I stated in one of my earlier posts, I will have a contingency contract with him stating the behaviors we both agree he should work on.  I believe that within this contract I should praise him when choosing to demonstrate these behaviors to promote and reinforce his self-efficacy.  I want Willard to have a high sense of self-efficacy and I know that I can show him this through exuding confidence in him, and explaining to him how we can both work on his strengths and weaknesses.  There were many examples from the presentation in class about self-efficacy, but I found one of pintrest (of course!) here.  Also, as I was reading that post, the overall blog is a great resource for teachers and focuses mainly on math, but there are many different mixes of subjects thrown in! I enjoyed looking at it, you can go to the main blog home here.  

Self-regulation would intertwine with this process because if I am expecting to help Willard in his sense of self-efficacy, I also want to help him with his self-regulation.  I think the process of modeling is a great way to show him this.  To help Willard's self-regulation, I feel it would benefit him to continually go over his goals (our contingency contract) on a weekly basis, and keep track of his process.  Obviously, I would want Willard to explain how he feels the progress is going, and promote the confidence he needs to start setting goals for himself.  I think this would be a somewhat long process, but it would be one to help greatly when he starts to "get the hang of it".  

Again, off to pinterest to find some interesting things, and this looked really neat to me.  Not only that, but you can download a program to make your own!
The last resource I'm going to put is another blog, however this is about a book you can use to promote self-regulation without the children knowing that's what you're doing!  It's a great blog of an Art Teacher/Mother of two who wrote this book!  You can go here.

-S

Comparing behaviorist, cognitive, and constructivist viewpoints.

Consider your CSEL intervention case study.  Are there tools from a behaviorist view for either encouraging productive behaviors or discouraging undesirable behaviors that you could apply to the case?  What are they?


In order to further understand my thoughts, I am going to preface my blog with the case study that I chose to include in my CSEL:

"It has been one month since the school year began and most of your 25 kindergarten students know class procedures, such as the schedule of learning activities, where they are supposed to be for each learning activity, where they are supposed to keep their personal items, and how they are expected to move about the room and the school building in order to ensure a productive learning environment.  Then there is Willard.  He must ask 20 or more times a day, “Teacher, when can we go outside to play?”  In addition, he often does not stay where he should to work on a given learning activity.  Instead, you find him wandering around the room and getting into other children’s personal things.  Three times this past week you looked up just in time to see Willard walking out of the classroom without permission.  Some of the other children in your classroom community have started making fun of Willard.  Others are beginning to become less engaged in their learning."

I think there are many tools that I could use within this case study to help our friend Willard as well as consequently affecting his class.   A few I will touch on are: classical conditioning, use 'token reinforcement', and a contingency contract.

A form of classical conditioning with Willard, I could pair a bell or a phrase that I use with him (or the whole class) and work to form the connection to a behavior (lowering their voices, finding their seat).  I think this could work exceptionally well if I could pinpoint a reminder that is easy for Willard to remember when hearing the sound.  I realize this will take a lot of time and work, but I think if it is in connection with other strategies, it has the potential to do really well.

Token reinforcement is something I had not thought a lot of previously and I really like the idea of.  In class we learned that token reinforcement is: "system in which tokens earned for good academics or behavior can be redeemed for a reward".   I think, especially knowing that emphasizing and reinforcing the 'right' in student behavior, if done consistently and with cues to help, Willard will start to excel through our journey in the classroom.  

Last, I think a contingency contract is always a good idea, no matter what the situation or child.  Not only will if provide a framework and understanding for all involved, but it will serve as a reminder to the student when/if they breach this contract of the goals they set for behaviors.  In having this, I can allow Willard to continue to trust me because I am not being biased one way or the other.  Why? If we clearly stated these goals of behavior beforehand and Willard falls short, it has already been predetermined and agreed upon by him.  

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Now, compare the interventions that you have identified above with what you think might work from a cognitive or constructivist viewpoint (you may need to Google for ideas but it's okay to just speculate based on your prior knowledge).  How do they compare to behaviorist tools?  What are the benefits of each theory, and what are the deficits? Which theory might play a larger role in how you determine classroom management?

Naturally, I am going to gravitate toward a constructivist viewpoint because that it the strategy and theory that I am most confident in.  I feel that, when I came into the program at UT I had more of a behaviorist theory of learning, and to switch from that to constructivist seems like a long shot looking back. 

In terms of comparing, I can see how the contingency contract would closely align with constructivism because it involves more of the child's involvement (brainstorming, talking about, and agreeing upon behaviors together with a teacher) and self regulation (gradually becoming aware and attempting to 'control' the behavior they discussed and agreed upon with teacher earlier).

I think that is something that is a huge benefit in behaviorism, as well as putting an emphasis on the right form of the behavior.  I don't necessarily think that it has to be with physical reinforcements either. 
A huge benefit of constructivism is that it solely focuses and emphasizes helping children learn and form these behaviors from their construction of knowledge.  I think this is very important because you do not want a child thinking of just doing a behavior to get a reward, you want them to make meaningful connections of why they should or should not engage in a behavior.

That brings me to a deficit in behaviorism, I think that you run the risk of the child performing these behaviors and not understanding why they are being asked in the first place.  Also, I feel that is "covering up" the behavior, what happens when the child has been in a classroom for a year (with this kind of reinforcement) and then proceeds to the next grade and there isn't anything like that for them.  I think that would be hard for them to understand.
A deficit in constructivism is that there may not be enough time in the day for you as a teacher, managing 25 students, to take the time to talk and interact with Willard in a way that will help him become aware of his actions.  It would be great to be able to have that one-on-one contact any time we would like in a classroom to facilitate learning and help construction of knowledge, but the reality is there is never enough (at least with my experience). 

In knowing all of this, I think I will have a pretty good blend of both behaviorism and constructivism.  I would love to lean more toward the constructivism side, but I know some aspects are just not realistic in the professional world as an elementary school teacher.  I look forward to further exploring my personal learning theory!

Metacognition

Choose one of the following: Consider a lesson plan you might use. Which metacognitive skills/abilities are involved as students gain facility/knowledge in this domain? OR Think of an activity or lesson component that explicitly teaches one or more metacognitive and one or more problem solving skills.

Throughout my classes at UT in regards to Early Childhood Education, I think I could reflect on many activities or lesson components that explicitly teaches metacognitive or problem solving skills.  For this blog post however, I will highlight one that can encompass both! 

One activity that I do almost on a daily basis, whether I am in a Kindergarten classroom (for my pre-internship) or at work in the ELC (preschool) is reading aloud.  Not only can you expose children to a great book, you can also exercise their metacognition skills. Before you read the book you can present the front cover and ask them to make a prediction or ask if they know anything about what the book is about (judging again, but the front cover).  As you go along in the book, you can ask different questions about their predictions or their thoughts and comments about what they know and evoke conversation about this.  Lastly, after the book is finished ask the children to reflect and make connections, or to share something the learned about or thought about because of reading the book.  Here is a video explaining a read aloud, it is focused a lot of fluency but it demonstrates a pretty good read aloud (please disregard the loud floral jacket - ha!).

A problem solving activity I think could be incorporated in the read aloud as well is asking the children how they would solve a problem in the book if they were the main character.  This will allow the children to brainstorm the steps they would need to solve the problem at hand for the main character, and will allow them to exercise their "problem solving" skills.  I think this is excellent because it really lets the children connect to what is being read, and allows them to make real world applications (stepping into someone else's shoes).  

I hope this activity will help you in your classes! I know that when I do this in both of mine, it makes reading a book more interesting for everyone involved.  Also, it helps you to gain some insight into how the children go about these processes and makes the learning meaningful - which we all know is very important in the long run!