Case 1: Mr. West wants his students to truly understand Civil War battles. He engages the help of a local Historical Re-enactment Society and assigns each of his students to the Union or Confederate side. His students join the re-enactors from 7:00am-7:00pm for a full day of activities which include a long march (complete with rudimentary battle gear), setting up camp, cooking over campfires, scouting territory, and engaging in a historically representative battle.
1. After participating in this activity, what do you think the students will remember? How might those memories differ from those students would have if they only read about the Civil War in their textbook?
I would think that most of the students would be able to remember most of the activities that were done with the hands on approach. They are able to picture and be guided through interactive activities that provide them a visual representation of what might have happened in history. Students that only have the opportunity to read about and talk about things but not visually do and interact with them will not become actively engaged in the lesson and what they are being taught.
2. How does Mr. West’s use of a Civil War re-enactment engage students’ emotions? What is the relationship between emotions and learning?
It will be exciting for students to participate in this hands' on activity and get them actively engaged in what is being taught in the classroom. Their emotions will become positively charged presenting a positive transfer of information and making sure that they do fully engage in what is being taught. If a student is resistant and closed off emotionally it becomes extremely difficult for an educator to teach and get the students actively engaged. Learning is done in many ways through emotion providing either a positive or negative connotation to the information that is being presented.
3. Based on the principles of dual-coding theory, what activities would be effective for Mr. West to use as a follow-up to the re-enactment?
Mr. West has provided students with the chance to visually act out the history event that was being taught in class. This information would best be accompanied by a verbal accompaniment that does not compete with the visual presentation but rather the verbal information would build on the visual information. The verbal/reading component would have cement the topics that were presented in class and gives the students the opportunity to form the connections necessary for bridging those connections between the topics that are presented.
Case 2: Mr. Dunkin and Mr. Richards, teachers at the same school, are debating in the teacher’s lounge about who provides the best type of organization for the students’ learning. Mr. Dunkin lectures and assigns reading and chapter problems Mondays through Thursdays. On Fridays he gives a short answer exam. In Mr. Richards’ class the students never know what will take place on any given day until they arrive in class and look at a detailed outline of the hour’s activities on the chalkboard. His class engages in mix of role-plays, lecture, videos, group projects and demonstrations. Mr. Richards occasionally gives surprise quizzes and his unit tests can include true/false, multiple choice, short answer, or essay.
4. Who do you think provides better instruction for his students? Support your answer from an information processing perspective.
I would think that Mr. Richard's classes would be thriving more in the subject than the students in Mr. Dunkin's class. Although the students don't have a set schedule in the latter classes, the students in Mr. Richard's classes have the opportunity to do different activities that build upon different types of learning styles and do indeed get students actively engaged in the material. Mr. Richards' students are engaging in metacognition and the different learning transfer processes that do take place. They are learning through conscious attempts to build on new knowledge and taking that knowledge and building through activities and visual representations that help with increasing that knowledge rather than making them do strict book work.
5. How would you expect the students’ learning outcomes to differ depending on which teacher they had?
From my own personal experiences of teaching and working with kids that do have teachers that are very similar to these two presented, they do thrive in different learning situations based on their own learning styles and the different ways that they process information. It is also largely based upon on what level of learning they are at, what age group they are a part of. Students that only participate in bookwork, lectures, and reading do not retain information as well as students that become actively engaged in the classroom and do hands on activities that are not limiting the presentation of information to one outlet. Educators should be open to teaching new ways and working to adapt students to new ways of learning and new ways of presenting information.
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