Fertile Minds (Extra Credit)

In the artical Firtile Minds, that J. Madeline Nash wrote, She talks about how when we hear a fetus's brain its a sound like the waves in the ocean or a rat-a-tat-tat. They soon see that these burst of electricity that go through the brain are shaping the brain to recognize the sound of a mother or fathers voice. This process happenes even before birth.
When the baby is born it has trillions of nerons and as the baby gets older it loses nerons that are not uses often or are not related t things they see touch or hear. Studies have shown that babies who don't play much or are rarely touched develop brains 20% to 30% smaller than normal babies their age. She goes along to say that rich experiences really produce rich brains.
In this artical she also talks about how the first year of a babies life and that they need to be touched held and talked to. By the age of three if they have been abused or neglected they will have signs of that their whole life, but a Dr. Harry Chugani says that we may not beable to control what happens before birth but we can effect what happens after. He referse to well planned preschools can help those kids in need.
It goes on to talk about have the older the kid gets the more axons and nerons are fired and they have more energey inside the brain.
in counclusion she says that things need to be taught to the kids while they are young and not wait until they are older becasue they have more nerons fireing and they will learn it better. If we fail to do this she says that we will all suffer in the year 2010.

Learning Log

Piaget's Theory- Learn better by doing. Equilibrium process.


Formal Operations Stage (11-though adulthood)

1.Ability to reason about abstract, hypothetical and contrary-to-fact ideas
2. Formulation ans testing of multiple hypotheses
3.Separation and control of variables
4. Proportional reasoning


Concrete operations Stage (6-7 or until 11or 12)

1. Differentiation of one's own perspective from the perspective of others
2. Class inclusion
3. conservation
4. reversibility.


Preoperational Stage ( 2 or until 6 or 7)

1. Egocentric Perspective
2. Lack of class inclusion
3. Lack of conservation
4. Irreversibility.


So What?
I think that this theory helps us understand where some kids may be at in learning. It gives us a little heads up on where are students are and what they can learn at the age they are. Though some of the ages might me off it still lets us see where a child should be at learning wise. It also helps us to encourage our students to progress to the next levels of learning.

Now What?
I feel like now I can pick the age groups I want to teach and go into more depth on where those students should be or where it would be good for them to be learning wise and then act on it. Help the students I have achieve more and help them climb up and learn how to better understand and learn things

Learning Log

Today in class we talked a lot about the different intelligences people may. Here is what I learned today.

Fluid Intelligence- acquiring knowledge quickly

Crystallized Intelligence- knowledge you have from through out your life.

Sternbergs Triarchic Theory:

And of course Gardner's Multiple Intelligence

There are eight intelligences you can be categorized under and you can be under more then one.

Linguistic

Logical

Musical

Visual

Kinestetic

Interpersonal

Intrapersonal

Naturalistic

So What?

By knowing the different possibilities in which your students can learn it helps you understand that not everyone learns the same why. this allows you to be creative with your teaching and helps you hit every learning intelligence that Gardner lists. This also helps you think of ways you will need to adapt to the things you have in your classroom to get by with the lesson.

Now What?

Now that we did an exercise of picking a unit and plugging an activity into each intelligence it will help me make other lesson/unit plans. I should always consider the eight multiple intelligence every time I create a unit plan so that i can hit every kind of learner in my classroom/gym.

Learning Log

Last time in class I really enjoyed talking about poverty and how it would affect us in our classroom. We also mentioned things like culture and different backgrounds each child has.

So What?
I think this is one thing that is very important to learn about as future teachers. If out student is hungry, didn't get much sleep cause he/she sleep in his/her car the night before or smells bad because he/she cant get a shower then what do you think he/she thinks and worries about???? Not what your teaching that's for sure. He/she wont care about playing basketball, changing sentences around or even what happened in World War Two. By knowing your students and their needs you can help them. By helping them they will be more willing to learn what is being taught because they wont be worrying about when their next meal will be.


Now What?
By knowing that there might be a hungry student in my class, or someone with a different culture it makes me want to know my students more and come to understand where they come from and how I can make the classroom somewhere they want to be. I want to help them meet their needs so they can worry about learning instead of surviving.