A. While I have tried most if not all of the learning
theories discussed in this lesson, I tend to find the most success with
constructivism. My teaching experience
has been mostly with middle school age students, and being able to relate math
topics back to prior experiences or real world issues helps students understand
the WHY behind what they are doing and retain the information longer. Especially with math topics, students
struggle with the question of “when am I ever going to use this” so when I’m
able to answer that question for them and give them real situations and
scenarios to apply the learning to, I get a more positive response and attitude
towards learning from them.
B. Instructional Design refers to more than just
teaching, but rather the entire process of teaching, learning, planning, and
review. Quite literally, I think of it
as “designing instruction” where you are not just the one delivering the
lesson, but you are also facilitating learning by looking at the end goal and
building a strategy around achieving that goal.
While teaching is more one-dimensional as it refers to delivering
content on a specific topic, Instructional Design is building an environment
that focuses on learning and retention of a skill.
C. I think throughout this semester I will continue to
change my way of thinking from one of “teaching” to one of “designing”. Being a classroom teacher, we are trained to
deliver content and test content, but not so much “evaluate” content
mastery. I think that to be successful
in the class and the practices that we are learning, I need to look more at the
big picture of what I want my students to retain, and I need to become more
familiar with different learning theories and how to incorporate several in to
a single lesson rather than one theory per lesson.
