Wonderments from Mayer Text and Wiked - EPSY 490

Each set of Wonderments is individually referenced.

 

 

Chapter 4 -15 Wonderments

 

1.  114-115 - I wonder how many times I have taught students something and they went home and told their parents what I said (adding to it and leaving things out) and the parents thought Mr. Moore does not know what he is talking about.

 

2.  116 - I wonder how long ago graphic organizers became popular as a pre-writing activity.

 

3.  116-117 - I wonder if teaching the students pre-writing activities has helped improve scores on standardized tests. 

 

4.  117 - I wonder if the reviewing process shown on this page is including peer-editing or just talking about the students own review of their paper/story.

 

5.  118 - I wonder why my students’ writing seems to be very mechanical and doesn’t seem to have a lot of creativity. 

 

6.  122 - I wonder if students planned out an outline or organizer if they would be able to improve their writing speed and wouldn’t pause as much.

 

7.  124- I wonder why more students don’t pre-write if it is proven to make their essays better.  I wonder if we don’t enforce it enough as teachers or they just don’t want to waste the time.

 

8.  127 - I wonder at what age level you should stop looking at children’s writing like their art “an expression which is created with pleasure” and start correcting the mistakes. 

 

9.  142 - I wonder how I can edit the plan think-sheet to help my students write cohesive paragraphs in Geography.

 

10. 133 - I wonder when I stopped review a lot of what I read - I think I fall into the college freshmen group because I spend very little time reviewing.

 

11. 139 - I have started modeling good writing for my students in my writing class, but it doesn’t seem to improve their writing and I wonder what I am doing wrong. 

 

SKEP Chapter

 

12. I wonder how different our lives would be if humans never developed written or spoken language.

 

13. I wonder how many of my special education students are still learning to read and this is why it is so difficult for them to read to learn.

 

14. I wonder what it will take to avoid students falling into the fourth grade slump. 

 

15. I wonder why phonics was the answer, but then it wasn’t very good, but now it is coming back into favor when used with other strategies.  Has anyone seen the shirts - “Hoked on Fonics Wurkd fer ME” or something like that I know some of the letters are supposed to be backwords.

 

Resources

 

Mayer, Richard E. (2003). Learning and Instruction. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education

 

(January 2008).  Rules and Consequences are Used to Shape Student Actions.  Retrieved on January 27th, 2008, from CTER WikEd - http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/SKEP_Rules_and_consequences_are_used_to_shape_student_actions

 

 

 

Mayer Chapter 7 and SKEP Chapter - 20 Wonderments

 

1.  Mayer pg. 242-43 - I wonder how long it would take different types of animals to figure out the Skinner Box and if animals from the same species, but different ages do differently.

 

2.  Mayer pg. 248 - I wonder if token economies would work in secondary schools or if students would think it was un-cool to earn tokens.

 

3.  Mayer pg. 249 - I wonder if it is the removal of the tokens or the removal of the newly implemented structure that the token economy offered caused the negative behavior to increase.

 

4.  I wonder when rewards really turn into bribing children to do what we ask.

 

5.  I wonder if my principal knows that I also like positive reinforcement. (I have a good boss and he does do this).

 

6.  Mayer pg. 253-254 - I wonder how expected rewards causes a decrease in intrinsic motivation?  I wonder if this ever happened to me.

 

7. Mayer pg. 257 - I wonder how to use more feedback with my students when doing in class work.

 

8. Mayer pg. 267 - I wonder how hard it would be to teach the skill of operating a word processor to a person, like my grandparents, who have never used one?  It would be much different then teaching one of my students.

 

The following Wonderments are from the SKEP Chapter. 

 

9.  SKEP Introduction - I wonder how a teacher that teaches like the first one could possibly enjoy their job.

 

10. Canter/Canter - I wonder how they came up with the conclusion that “Children are not innately motivated to behave in school”.  Did they do research on this?

 

11. Canter/Canter - As a very structured teacher I wonder how much of my lack of discipline problems come from this structure.

 

12. Positive Discipline - I wonder how many students I negatively affected by punishing them.

 

13. Behavior Shaping Model - I wonder if I praise my students enough for their hard work and dedication to me and my class.  I also wonder how I can improve my use of praise in my classroom.

 

14. Curwin/Mendler - I wonder if their theory is similar to what I do when I model classroom behavior/expectations for my students.

 

15.  Alfie Kohn- I teach in a fairly upper-middle class district and I wonder how many of my students are intrinsically motivated or if most of them are extrinsically motivated by bribes from their parents.

 

16.  I wonder if Thorndike looked at things too much through the eyes of a scientist as opposed of looking through it in the eyes of a teacher.  Some of these people are too scientific and not enough realistic.  I also wonder how many of these people ever worked as a teacher in the K-12 setting.

 

17.  I wonder if any of these authors have thought about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and looked at how many students act out because their basic needs aren’t met.  I can trace most of the misbehaviors in my classroom to basic needs not being met.  I wonder if we help these students feel secure and important if their negative behaviors would stop.

 

18. Globalization Factor - I wonder if because of the vast backgrounds of our students if there will ever be any one theory of discipline that will work on every student.  It seems that every “problem” student needs a different behavior plan.

 

19. Others - J. Michael Palardy says that he sees three practices that he thinks are negative and one of these is Assertive Discipline.  I wonder what are the other two practices that he deems negative.

 

20. Thorndike’s Law of Effect - I wonder if we constantly reward kids extrinsically if they will lose all of their intrinsic motivation.

 

Resources

 

Mayer, Richard E. (2003). Learning and Instruction. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc .

(February 2008).  The Psychology of Writing.  Retrieved on February 26, 2009, from CTER WikEd - http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/SKEP_The_psychology_of_writing

 

 

SKEP Chapter on Mathematics - 15 Wonderments

 

1. I wonder how long that myth that men are better at math than girls has actually been around.  I always use that myth in my lesson on myths about Asia and it gets the girls really mad, but it is a good teaching moment.

 

2. I wonder why I bought into myth #2- Math is not creative.  I have always thought about this, but now I will look at it a different way.

 

3.  I wonder which of the four steps to solving a math problem caused me the most trouble.  I was a straight A student except for math (mostly C’s and my only D in my life).

 

Mayer Chapter 5

4.  pg. 175 – “students who have understood the mathematics they have studied will be able to solve any assigned problem in five minutes or less.”  - I wonder how many of our students will actually spend five minutes on a match problem (at least at younger grades).

 

Mayer Chapter 8

5.  I wonder how you would actually carry out a pure discovery lesson in a 7th grade Geography Class.

 

6.  I also wonder how long the lesson would actually take to implement.

 

7.  I wonder how we can get teachers to do more guided discovery and less expository teaching.  If it is the best practice of the three then teachers should be trying to implement it.

 

8.  I have probably only used deductive learning and I wonder how I can make my geography class more inductive. 

9.  I wonder what the answer to the POE question which will keep a can of soda cold for a picnic-rapping it in aluminum foil or wrapping it in wool is.  I really need to figure out some ways to incorporate this into my classroom.

 

Mayer Chapter 12

10. I wonder if Polya’s Teaching of Problem Solving is still used in this time of standardized testing.  I’m not sure some teachers care if the students learn the process as long as they get the correct answer.

 

11. I wonder why they were not able to come up with more reliable results for the Productive Thinking Program.

 

12. pg. 421 I wonder if we actually could have a Minister of State for Development of Human Intelligence.  I think this would make our country a much better country if everyone had at least some problem solving skills.  I can’t believe Venezuela actually has one of theses.

 

13.  pg. 422-423 – I wonder if Venezuela still uses Odyssey to teach its students because of the proof that it improved scores.

 

14.  I wonder (like the textbook) if problem solving is a “single ability or many component skills?

 

15.  pg. 412 I wonder why we don’t use more apprenticeship type programs in our vocational schools.  I know we use some, but there should be more options if it helps students to be successful.

 

Resources

Mayer, Richard E. (2003). Learning and Instruction. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc .

(February 2008).  The Psychology of Learning and Teaching Mathematics.  Retrieved February 25, 2008 from CTER WikEd - http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/SKEP_The_Psychology_of_learning_and_teaching_mathematics

 

Mayer - Wonderments Chapter 13 and 14

 

Mayer Chapter 13

 

1. pg 431 – I wonder why we don’t use more real world examples in education.  I think a perfect hook for teaching the multiplication of fractions would be to bring in the food and have the kids do the problem that way.  This would allow them to learn much more quickly.

 

2. pg 434 – I wonder how much of the information we teach our students does not meet their needs outside of the school setting (today and in the future).

 

3. pg 434 – I wonder, in the course of a thirty year teaching career do, how many times a teacher has to hear “Why do I have to learn this?”.  I always respond, “so you can be educated in the ways of the world and be more successful”.  Unfortunately, the student is sometimes right and what we teach them they won’t ever use.  They don’t see that sometimes the act of learning is the important part.

 

4. pg 435 – I wonder why we don’t teach more “Street Mathematics” not only to our lower students, but to all students.  This is definitely the math they will use on a day to day basis (I’m not saying that the higher levels of math aren’t important).

 

5. pg 436-437 – I wonder why the student did twice as good on the word problem as the computational problem.  I know why they did so well in street mathematics, but the difference in the other two surprised me.

 

6.  pg. 437 – I wonder how much of this street math is actually taught in schools today.  As a junior high social studies teacher I don’t really have the opportunity to see too many math lessons.

 

7. pg. 443 – I wonder how many lessons I can come up with to use reciprocal teaching now that I know how great of a strategy it is. 

 

8. pg. 447 – I wonder why the difference in cooperative and individual learning was not larger in the graph on pg 447.  I would have thought there would have been a larger difference.  I always thought my class did really well and learned a lot when they were in groups.

 

9.  pg 445 – I wonder why the teacher used groups of 4-6 members.  I have found in my class groups of 3 are the best fit. 

 

Chapter 14

 

10.  pg. 459 - I wonder how to make learning important to all of my students who don’t care about education?  It is a really good goal for all teachers to have, but I don’t think it is possible for every single lesson.

 

11.  pg. 462 - I wonder why some students work hard and over-achieve no matter how boring a topic may be to them and others can’t work hard on fun assignments?

 

12.  pg. 463 - I wonder how much a student has interest in a subject is related to whether or not they had a good/bad teacher in that subject in the past?  I know it can take students a long time to get over a bad teacher.

 

13.  pg. 467 - I wonder why students learned better when reading a passage without the seductive details.  Was it because the seductive details stuck out and the students only remembered the “fun” information.

 

14.  pg. 448 - I wonder why group study with group reward for individual learning was the most effective type of group learning?  I think I need to change the way I do group work in my classroom.

 

15. pg. 470 – I wonder where a persons self-efficacy come from?

 

Resources

Mayer, Richard E. (2003). Learning and Instruction. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc .

Wonderments – Carl Rogers and Various WikEd Articles

 

WikEd -  Classrooms Where Active Listening and Student Empowerment are Essential

 

1.  pg. 4 – I wonder what percentage of teachers have nonjudgmental relationships with their students?

 

2.  pg. 4 – I wonder why teachers don’t empower students to solve more of their own problems.  I always instruct my students that I will not solve a problem for them that they can solve on their own and it has worked great.

 

3.  pg. 5 – Even though I do some rote memorization with maps I wonder if the rest of my classroom teaching is teaching students how to learn to learn?

 

4.  pg. 7 – Just to see what would happen I read the section on the Summerhill School to one of my 7th Grade Geography Class (students have a lot of choice).  The students all thought it was a terrible idea because they didn’t think that they were mature enough to make these decisions.  I wonder if this was because they were thinking realistically or if they had just been told so many times they were not mature that they believed it?

 

5.  pg. 7 – (Continued from previous statement) – I wonder if students really would do a good job if given lots of freedom of choice in education or if they would take the easy way out.

 

6.  pg. 8 – When I interviewed for my current position I stated that I wanted to “facilitate learning in students” –  I wonder how many people use that get hired even though they never plan on following through?  I think giving the students the tools to learn the information works much better than me rattling off facts to them all day ( I know this works much better for older grades).

 

7.  Teacher Effectiveness Training (WikEd) – pg. 1 – I wonder how I survived my first year of teaching when I tried to direct or force my student’s Behavior.

 

8.  Teacher Effectiveness Training (WikEd) – pg. 2 – I wonder what door openers are (are they like bell work).

 

9.  I-Messages (WikEd) – pg. 1 – I wonder why I-messages are not more actively taught in schools?  I have used them extensively and have found them very productive.  I think by using them you can change your attitude on teaching.  I also feel a lot less bossy when I use I-Messages.

 

10.  I-Messages (WikEd) – pg. 2 – I wonder if my students realize that I rarely tell them what to do and instead show them what they should be doing?

 

11.  Leal School Rights and Responsibilities - pg. 1 - I wonder if the rights and responsibilities section is too long for young children.

 

12. The Person-Centered Approach - pg. 1 - I wonder if I use sympathy when I really need to be using empathy.

 

13. Cooperative Learning in Hong Kong Universities - pg. 2 - I wonder how difficult it would be to teach in a culture that is completely different then mine?

 

14.  Creating Peaceable Schools - pg. 1 - I wonder why we cannot meet the needs for all of our students to belong, have power, freedom, and fun when we put so much money and effort into education. 

 

15.  Creating Peaceable Schools - pg. 1 - I wonder what would happen if we let students mediate problems between other students?  Would this work or end in more conflict?

 

 

Resources

 

 

(2007, January 7).  Classrooms Where Active Listening and Student Empowerment are Essential.  Retrieved April 18, 2007, from CTER WikEd Website:  http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/SKEP_Classrooms_where_active_listening_and_student_empowerment_are_essential

 

(2008).  Creating the Peaceable School.  Retrieved April 19, 2008, from

http://library.adoption.com/Childhood-Learning-and-Education/Creating-the-Peaceable-School-A-Comprehensive-Program-for-Teaching-Conflict-Resolution/article/3250/1.html

 

(2006, June 28).  I-Messages.  Retrieved April 18, 2007, from CTER Wiked Website:  http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/I-messages

 

(2000 August).  Leal School Rights and Responsibilities.  Retrieved April 18, 2008 from http://www.usd116.org/leal/r&r.html

 

(2007, April 23).  Teacher Effectiveness Training.  Retrieved April 18, 2007, from CTER WikEd Website: http//wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Teacher_Effectiveness_Training

 

Tjosvord, Dean.  (2004).  Cooperative Learning in Hong Kong Universities.  Retrieved April 18, 2008, from http://wwwliasce.net/newsletters/2004_summer/2004_summer_7.shtml

 

(2001).  The Person-Centered Approach.  Retrieved April 18, 2008, from http://www.ahpweb.org/rowan_bibliography/chapters6.html