Lauren Biller

The Way Students Learn When I think about how students learn, I do not believe there is just one way. Many different factors and methods go into learning new material. I am going to give my belief on the three ways I believe students learn best. The first way is through experiences and activities they have in and out of the classroom. The second way is through building off of and connecting information they already know. The third way is through problem solving where they can learn to work in groups to come up with a solution to the problem. Lev Vygotsky was a theorist from Russia that looked at how experiences through social interactions caused a student to learn in that way. If a student is constantly seeing their peer group or parents acting in a certain way, they will adapt and start to behave in that way also. This allows them to learn through their experiences and know what is acceptable and what is not. For example a teacher could model an example of something for their student or scaffold to provide a little help. Vygotsky gave an example of where a child wanted to ride a horse, but was too small to sit on the horse. Based on the child watching how a person rode a horse, they decided to pick up a stick and pretend that it was a horse. Since the child experienced someone else doing the action, they were able to come up in their own mind what they could do that would be similar. This example ties into my next learning experience of authentic learning (Kozulin, 2003). Authentic learning would be a good tool to use to help students learn due to it being in a real life situation (Mcleod, 2007). For example, if you are teaching the students what it would be like to become a teen mom or dad, you could give them baby dolls to take home. These baby

dolls would cry and would continue to until you put the key in their back which would eventually allow them to stop. This would be a good way to teach students what it would be like to have a baby and if they are really ready to have such a big responsibility at their age. Experiences are also a good way to learn because I believe the best way to learn something is to make a mistake first. If you make a mistake, it will help you to realize that you did not choose the best option and it could help you in the future at making better decisions. My second idea on how students learn deals with the Information Processing Theory and Subsumption Theory. When a student is presented with new information, they go through three stages. The first stage in called encoding where the information is received and the brain understands what it is and how important it is. Next is the storage stage where the brain decides if the information goes into short term or long term memory. If something you are teaching is very important for the students to remember, you want to make sure you keep reviewing and adding to it so that it will go into their long term memory. Finally, the last stage is retrieval and this is where old information is remembered for later use. This allows students to build upon information they already know and it helps them to remember it. This last stage deals with David Ausubel and how he thought it was an important part in learning Ausubel, Novak, & Hanesian, 1978). David Ausubel came up with the Subsumption Theory which is where new material is built off of old ideas. This is thought of as advanced thinking and is easier for older students to do rather than younger students. As a child becomes older, they will begin to connect ideas together. A beneficial way to see what students learn is to let them do brainstorming through the use of a KWL chart. KWL stands for What I Know, What I Want to Know, and What I Learned. This will help them to visualize and see what they already know and how the ideas of

what they want to know connect together. He came up with the advanced organizer which allows students to learn visually and not just memorize information. When information can be organized, it sets a clear idea of what it is in the students mind and they will remember it a lot longer than if they simply memorized it. Allowing them to work in groups on their organizer ties into my last way students learn best (Cooper, 2000). The third way I believe students learn is by allowing them to solve problems in groups. This teaches many things other than just figuring out the answer to the problem. By solving a problem in a group, the student learns how to get along with others, listen to others ideas, and take turns when speaking. Not only are they able to think critically to come up with a solution, but they also learn skills that will help them in society when dealing with others. When they begin to develop a solution to the problem they will think about the information they have already previously learned and think of how they can apply that to figure out the solution. This will be a technique that I will most likely use the most in my classroom one day. Out of all the different ways students learn, I have told you the three that I believe to be the most effective. The first was based on experiences the student had in and out of the classroom. The second was using information they already knew to be the basis of new information they were presented with. The third way dealt with using problem solving which used critical thinking and people skills they might need in the real world. I would want to incorporate these three ways that students learn into my classroom.

References Ausubel, D.P., Novak, J.D., & Hanesian, H. (1978). Educational psychology: a cognitive view. New York. NY: Holt McDougal. Cooper, S. (2000). David ausubel, m.d. (1918-2008). Retrieved from http://www.lifecirclesinc.com/Learningtheories/constructivism/ausubel.html Kozulin, A. (2003). Vygotskys educational theory in cultural context. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Mcleod, S. (2007). Lev vygotsky. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsycholohy.org/vygotsky.html