Methodology

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Catedra II

Glogster

This is a new type of lesson plan, in contrast to the old format that we used is more organized in my opinion, and it's easier to complete it xD. If you want to download it just click here!.

The lesson plan was focused on the creation of an activity which objective was to develop the writing skill in the students, so in order to do that we had to use this online tool that allows you to create a kind of poster with lots of options that permits you to make an interesting and creative site. (If you want to see the tutorial that I created in order to show the students in the planned lesson click here).

This time we had to use Glogster to develop writing skill, so the activity that we proposed was the preparation of a Glogster including a biography in which students had to use at least : 1 video, 1 audio file, 2 pictures. (To see the full version of instructions click here).

Webquest

The lesson plan of this activity was deleted of mediafire by unknown reasons although I'll still put the link xD
Lesson Plan (obviously we are going to re-upload it).
Since I didn't create the entire activity I can give a brief description of it.

The activity consisted on make a brief radio newscast based on a given topic.
It was divided in the following steps:
Introduction
Task
Process
Evaluation

To see the full description of each point visit the following link. Webquest

Lesson Plan Nursery School

This lesson plan is the first one that we do for this level of students, so it was difficult in different ways.
First, we had to think about the need of the students, their abilities and new ways to create the learning, or to do meaningful the activities.
Second, we had to focused on the treatment that it was one of the most difficult things I think, it's new to change the way that you usually act in order to reach the students.
Third, the level of English that we had to use it supposed to be simplified by us, but it was difficult because I realized that it required a lot of previous preparation, maybe not for everybody, but I think it's proportional to the personality of the teacher.
Well I think those are the aspects that we had to pay more attention to.

Here is the lesson plan... just click the picture :)

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Metacognition

Ways to Foster Metacognition.

1.-Activate Background Knowledge.
2.-Discuss Learning with Students.
3.-Have students identify their type of intelligence.
4.-Give students tools and have them construct their own learning (Scaffolding).
5.-Control and regulation of activities.

Homework Prezi Presentation.

Wikipedia: "Automaticity"
Wikipedia: "Cognitive Load"

1) In your own words, what is "automaticity" and "cognitive load"?

Automaticity is the ability to do things uncosciously, it's usually related with repetition. For example, learning how to cook is an activity that over time becomes automatic and repetitive. When it reaches this stage it's when the learning was done.

Cognitive load is the excessive amount of content given to the students which results in the brain working harder to process all the information.

2) How do we develop automaticity?

Drilling techniques to make sure that the learning is permanent.

3) Create an example of how teachers can change the amount of "extraneous cognitive load" on an assignment?
Applying strategies or aids that help to explain the content clearly without adding additional information that is not relevant to the students. One example is the use of material or resources, in other words the use of images or videos to explain a certain content that results in a meaningful learning experience.

4) When have you felt that you had a "full" cognitive load?
In classes where we have to read lot of texts that have lots of information that is not relevant.
For example in a text with 20 pages of content only 7 are useful.