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?
After participating in this activity, I think the students will remember alot of things about the Civil War. One of the parts of RAD teaching is to give the students experiences which will allow them to make emotional connections. By giving students the opporunity to actually march carrying battle gear, set up a camp, participate in a mock battle, etc, the students will have feelings associated with those experiences. They will most likely feel sympathy for the soldiers because of how hard it was for them to do day to day things. They may feel gratitude for what they did and pride in the soldiers for how hard they worked. All of these emotions will allow students to remember the details of the life of a soldier in the Civil War.
If the students merely read about the Civil War from a textbook, their memories would be completely different. Although they may read about what the soldiers did each day, how long it took them to get to different battles, and how many friends they lost in the war, the students would probably grasp very little of what it was actually like for the soldiers. Since they would most likely have no emotions attached to the information they were learning, it would be harder for the students to remember the different concepts about the Civil War. Experience creates more vivid memories and emotional connections.
2. How does Mr. West’s use of a Civil War re-enactment engage students’ emotions? What is the relationship between emotions and learning?
As I said before, one of the main concepts of RAD teaching is to allow students to make emotional connections to the things they are learning. By letting the students particpate along with the re-enactment, Mr. West is letting the students establish emotional connections. The students experience struggle, excitement, industriousness, comraderie and maybe even some fear (I would be scared even in a Civil War battle re-enactment so some of the students may be also). By cultvating emotions, students can create more vivid memories. They can think about how they felt when they were marching with the re-enactors, or building a campfire. They have something they can connect the information with which will help them learn better and make a more lasting memory.
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?The dual-coding theory is based off of the fact that people process visual and verbal information in different ways. When using both verbal and visual techniques when teaching a subject, a teacher can enhance a child's learning process. However, you must do this in a way which won't overwhelm the students. If you give a child too much verbal and visual stimulation at the same time, the child may get confused.
Some approriate verbal activties Mr. West can use to follw-up the re-enactment (since the re-enactment was a visual activity) are class discussions, personal written reflections and group brainstorms. Mr. West can have a big class discussion after the re-enactment where he has the students discuss what they learned during their day as Civil War soldiers. He can ask them what they felt about the different activities, what they feel about the real Civil War soldiers, what was hard about the experience, and what their favorite parts were. He can also have the students write reflections about their experiences. He can give them specific questions to answer and give them quiet time to give thoughtful responses. Another thing Mr. West could do is split the class into small groups. Once in the groups, he can have the students discuss their experiences and then make a written summary of all the things which they learned. He may even have the groups creat mnemonic devices to help them remember certain information. By combining these verbal and written activties with the re-enactment, the students should process the information more thoroughly.
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.
From an information processing perspective, Mr. Richards provides better instruction for his students. Those who follow the information processing perspective are dedicated studiers of how a person processes information they are learning into long term memory. They study the reasons certain information lasts in the brain for a lifetime and why other information is lost. Through their study, they have found key activities which help people take new concepts and turn them into memories that last. Some of these strategies include guided instruction by the teacher (teacher leads the students to the most important topics), creating experiences which are relative to the new information, making connections to prior knowledge, and having group projects and activities which allow the students to have hands-on participation. Mr. Richards seems to involve all of these strategies into his classroom. He provides his students with many different activities which allow his students to learn in ways which will create long term memories. He allows them to interact with each other, have hands-on experiences and verbal instruction. All of these techniques are greatly encouraged by believers in information processing.
5. How would you expect the students’ learning outcomes to differ depending on which teacher they had?
I would expect very different learning outcomes with these two teachers. For those students in Mr. Dunkin's class I would expect students to learn the information, but I don't believe the information would stay in the students' brains for a long period of time. His students would probably feel pressure to "cram" the material each week so they could do well on the Friday tests. Although I believe Mr. Dunkin's class to have good organization, his students are not able to have varying experiences which would make it hard to make long term memories of the information they are learning.
With Mr. Richard's class, I would expect the students to be able to have a deep grasp of the concepts they learn in his class. He approches different subjects from many different ways which allows students to have multiple perspectives and multiple connections for any given topic Mr. Richards teaches in his class. Because of this, I would guess the students would be able to remember the information very well and be able to apply the information to later years of schooling.
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