Information Processing TIPR

In my field experience classroom, the teacher uses a lot of way to focus the students attention. First of all she will give focused attention to the student she is working with. They will go sit at a table in the corner away from all other students so she and the student are both able to focus on one another better. She also is careful to give plenty of wait time between asking a student to do a task before she goes into helping them with the task. She will give up to 30 seconds depending on the student. She will start out with a simple and recognizable task, and then slowly move into something more difficult.  (Chinking). She uses meaningful lessons to relate the new tasks to things that the students already know or are interested in which makes them more memorable for the students. She will have the students use maintenance rehearsal to repeat the task many times and in many settings for a long period of time (distributed practice) before declaring that they are able to functionally perform that skills she was teaching them.

I think that there is always more that can be done in this area to help the students. But it is very difficult to completely individualize everything that you want to teach a student. I think that if there was all the time and resources in the word in would be great to be able to relate everything you are teaching to a student to something they like, especially for those students with special needs. Mostly and more realistically though, we need to give students more time to practice. Let them have distributive practice rather than forcing them to mass practice everything we teach them.

I hope that when I do a mini lesson I will be able to give the students time to use what I taught them n the lesson to do something enjoyable to them so that it will stick in their memory better. I want them to be able to remember the things they learn for the long run and not just long enough to pass it off and then forget about it forever.