Cognitivism in Practice

This week we were asked to explore two more instructional strategies that use technology. The first strategy which is cues, questions and advanced organizers focus on enhancing students' ability to retrieve, use, and organize information about a topic (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, &Malenoski, 2007). Being a visual learner, these strategies really got my attention. There were times in grade school when I had such a tough time understanding my teacher's lesson. The only way to sort out the information was through my own version of a "graphic organizer". Now that I am a elementary school science teacher, I try very hard to organize the information that I am giving to my students. Cueing the student to what they are learning and stating an essential question is so important. Providing great visuals makes it even better. Using an advance organizer helps students see the "big picture" of a particular topic. Incorporating multimedia helps bring it to life.

Another instructional strategy we learned this week was "summarizing and note taking". Here, teachers work on helping students separate important information from extraneous information and state the information in their own words (Pitler, Hubbell, Kuhn, & Malenoski, 2007). To help support student learning, word processing software can be used to change large paragraphs of information into small summarized sentences that are easier to understand. To help students with note taking, teacher made notes can be adjusted to graphic or text models. With new communication programs, such as wikis, students can work together on projects separately from their own homes.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.