Motivational Factors in the classroom

I think that motivation is key in the classroom. I think there are many factors that affect motivation among students such as internal factors, external factors and cognitive factors. For teachers i feel that it is very important to be able to recognize these factors within students and to address them by being able to accommodate to what works best for each student by what motivational factors influence them most. To recognize these factors though, it is important to observe your students since majority of the time your students aren't just going to come out and say what motivates them, especially since with younger students and sometime older students they are not aware of makes them motivated to learn yet or ever will if you don't help them to realize what gets them going or what their goal should be for today, this week, this year or for down the road in their life. As teachers I think the most important thing you can do for your students is to help them make goals to achieve them.

As i touched base on in the classroom management post, my idea of good classroom management has alot to do with addressing motivation within the classroom. I feel that a teacher can ultimately know their content very well and even know how to apply the content well in the classroom by informing the learning theories, however this is a very wholistic approach and as teachers the best way to facilitate students is by addressing their individual needs and key factor to being able to do this is by knowing what motivates them.

I know for me getting into Special Education knowing what motivates students is so important as I will constantly be having to accommodate my classroom and my teaching to the needs of each student. The most important focus in special education is to create realistic goals for each student to shoot for in both their education and in life. My goal as a teacher will be to prepare them to succeed in these goals by first creating these goals given their motivational factors and then to facilitate their learning by teaching them in a way that suites them best.

Being motivated yourself and by keeping your students motivated is key to being a successful teacher and having a successful classroom by ultimately having successful students!

Classroom Management

As a teacher there are a lot of things to consider when it comes to managing your classroom. I think that the first and foremost thing is to establish authority in your classroom with your students early on, which is achieved through gaining respect from yours students. In order to gain respect though you must give it. Giving respect to a student is creating a student teacher relationship with them, its indicating to them that you care about them and that you are going to do everything in your ability to help them succeed. It is also important to establish a routine in the classroom; keeping a consistency, an example of this is to make sure that you always start the classroom on time. These are are both examples of the behaviorist learning theory because these are methods in conditioning students on what to expect from the classroom and how to behave in it.

Another important aspect of classroom management is keeping students motivated to learn. If the students are not motivated then nothing that you do is going to matter because lets face it their not going to learn because they will completely reject anything that you try and teach them. In order to keep students motivated you yourself MUST know the content, how do you expect to teach them something you don't even know? Next, you need to plan your lessons out so you will know exactly how long they will take so that students wont have any idle time because once this happens once they will automatically assume that this is a routine in your class. This is all going back to BLT. Also, you must plan lessons according to where your students are at, making sure to keep the content within their ZPD so that they can stay actively mentally engaged in the class by participating and by being able to connect what they are learning to what they have previously learned in the past. Staying with this, to know where students are at a good teacher will observe students and take mental notes on how the students communicates and acts inside and outside of the classroom to fully understand where each student is at academically and in what areas students struggle and need attention to be drawn to. This is connecting to the Constructivist Learning Theory by scaffolding students learning to fit a certain mold given where there original knowledge had been at and where the end goal for them to be at is. A way in which teachers can do this is by constantly walking around the classroom, this way they are able to listen in on discussions when there are group activities so you can see who is participating in on the conversation and who is struggling with the content and also this helps to just control a classroom by keeping the students eyes on you instead of you facing the board and turning your back on them.

When teaching a lesson it is always important to keep the conversation in the class relevant to the content you are teaching. Create a friendly environment within your classroom by encouraging them to ask questions and to be able to contact you when they do need help. Also, allow for there to be some time for group work and for classroom discussions as this is a key time for students who dont necessarily grasp the concept fully to make the connections by listening to other students talk and create questions. This is going back to the Social Learning Theory by using the more knowledgeable peer strategy in the classroom. It is also important when creating lessons to set high expectations for your students and to with each day challenge them a little more so that they can begin to make more connections and to build on their knowledge of the criteria. This directly relates to the Developmental Learning Theory by starting off teaching students material in a very concrete way, therefore giving them a good foundation for the knowledge of the area and then to progress each day by teaching the material in a more abstract way therefore encouraging students to comprehend the material at many levels and in a more diverse and applicable way.

Now, these are obviously only some of the ways in which teachers can manage the classroom but clearly the only way to master this and for it to actually work to apply this every time you step foot into the classroom and to constantly make sure your doing these things. If you succeed in managing your classroom as a teacher then you can do anything because this is one of the hardest things to be able to do as a teacher but definitely the most important.

Think out loud

In completing this assignment I asked my peer what she knows about social problem solving, being a teacher in the special education department how to deal with confrontation will definitely be an everyday challenge for most of these students. When asking her to just think out loud about what she thought about social problem solving she immediately stopped and thought about a recent problem that she dealt with. She also referred to what she had done in the past using her previous schemas and how her skills in this department have developed and grown as she has found out what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to either confronting another individual or being confronted herself. In doing this she was demonstrating the constructive learning theory. After thinking about her previous confrontations she then listed a bunch of steps on how to look a the problem and deal with it. She first said that you have to look at the problem and figure out how your feeling about it, then talk about with her the peer you having the problem with but wait until you have both cooled off from the situation, then both take turns speaking and allowing each other to state their sides of the story, then come to a conclusion and talk about what both of you can do to avoid this situation in the future. Also, she said that when dealing with a problem that you should avoid speaking with others about the situation and to just deal with it by going directly to the person. She also gave a specific example of a problem that she dealt with which in doing so was demonstrating the Developmental Learning Theory.

Using DLT and SLT in lessons

My area of endorsements are in ELL and Special Education. Now, obviously in teaching in these areas I will need to encorporate many teaching strategies in developing lesson plans. For example if if were teaching ELL students how to put together a sentence, like proper sentence structure and formation, I could use the DLT which is the theory of having students start out learning something using a very concrete method to then having them approach the same thing but having them progress toward seeing the thing more abstractly. I would at first try and have them try and put together a sentence themselves or try and put together a sentence speaking to themselves, then I would maybe have them watch a clip of a video to allow them to visually see it and hear it and then after that I would have them try and converse with another student. I could also encorporate the SLT into this by having them correct one another or by asking one of the more knowledgeable peers to try and help them try and create a sentence. I do realize that is not a subject matter but in these areas alot of what I will be doing is trying to teach the students how to converse, as I will be working with english language learners as well as possibly severely disabled individuals. As for teaching them how to do something, more students in the special education department will need to be taught things most using very concrete material, however hopefully hey will be able to comprehend some abstract concepts. Now, obviously students in the ELL program will most likely be able to think abstractively once they have learned the language better.

How DLT informs all aspects of teaching

In the past few classroom sessions we have discussed as a class the use of the Developmental Learning Theory in the classroom. Although we were unable to really define what DTL is, i have grasped the concept of the theory a little better. In the beginning i thought that it was more of a teaching style rather than a set of ideas.

We were proposed the question "How does DLT inform all aspects of teaching?". In answering this question I would say that DLT informs all aspects of teaching because it is not a teaching style itself, rather a set of ideas that can be applied to every area of teaching in a unique way. DLT is a concept that has been theorized stating that individuals learn better when they are taught in a variety of ways in which are more concrete but then are able to grasp more abstract ideas as their knowledge of the material develops.

DLT definitely could be useful in the field of Special Education as student in these classrooms are frequently unable to grasp more abstract concepts and therefore need to be taught using more concrete ideas. Using DLT allows for them to be more hands on and to be taught subject matter that applies to them more so that they will be more inapt to take information away from the lesson.