Reference no: EM133304837

METACOGNITION

Activity 1
· Think about your own metacognitive processes. What kinds of strategies do you use to monitor and access your own learning?
· Of the declarative, procedural, or conditional knowledge which are you more proficient? more inefficient? · Of planning, information management, monitoring, debugging, or evaluation strategies which are you more proficient? more inefficient?

Activity 2
Students Challenge
You are the principal of a fairly homogeneous elementary school. In fact, most of your students are middle or upper middle class and white. In January, a new student enters your school-the daughter of an African-American professor who recently moved to the nearby college. After a few weeks, one of your third-grade teachers comes to you with a potential problem. She has noticed that the new student is not being included in many activities. She sits alone in the library and plays alone at recess. All these things are troubling to your teacher, but most disturbing of all is that yesterday the teacher overheard two of her higher achieving girls talking about their "White Girls Club." Your teacher is shocked and has turned to you for advice.
• Would you investigate to learn more about this "Club?" How?
• What advice do you give this teacher?
• Should you formulate a plan of action? What should you do? What should the teacher do? • If you find that the students have created a club that excluded nonwhite students, what would you do? • Do you need a school policy on this matter? If so, what should the policy be? If not, why not?

Students Challenge 2
One of the girls in your 10th-grade class is desperate for friends. Vanesa seems so lonely and depressed-no one ever joins her at lunch or walks with her to class. She is a reasonably good
student, but just doesn‘t seem to fit in. On several occasions she has tried to join a group by offering help or asking questions, but these initiations never go anywhere.
Even when a friendship begins, it never lasts. It seems like Vanessa gets so excited about the possibility of a developing relationship that she pushes the newfound friend away by overwhelming her with attention, showering her with special gifts, pouring out her heart, and sharing her deepest secrets and worries. Then Vanessa always seems to be the one exploited, abandoned, or hurt. Lately her schoolwork is careless and incomplete; she looks tired and pale.

• What are your concerns for this student?
• How do you think Vanessa feels about herself?
• What are some danger signs you might watch for?
• How would you help her form some genuine relationships?
• Consider the same situation, except the child is a third-grade student.

Learning Challenge
The seniors in the history classes seem to equate understanding with memorizing. They prepare for each unit test by memorizing the exact words of the textbook. Even the best students seem to think that flash cards are the only learning strategy possible. In fact, when you try to get them to think about history by reading some original sources, debating issues in class, or examining art and music from the time period you are studying, they rebel. -Will this be on the test?

Why are we looking at these pictures? Will we have to know who painted them and when?? -What‘s this got to do with history?? Even the students who participate in the debates seem to use words and phrases straight from the textbook without knowing what they are saying. • What do these students "know" about history? What are their beliefs and expectations, and how do these affect their learning?
• Why do you think they insist on using the rote memory approach?
• How would you teach your students to learn in this new way?
• How will these issues affect the grade levels in your building?

Learning Challenge 2
Your school's social studies department is highly regarded for its innovative approach to teaching. The program is oriented toward inquiry as a process, rather than the retention of historical fact. Typically, the department develops curriculum. The teachers are enthusiastic about their program and it is well received by the students. You do not always agree with the direction of the curriculum, but there is little question that this is a highly skilled and professional group of teachers whom you respect. Recent reform in the state has argued for back to basics and the use of curricular materials that stress recall of specific persons, places, and events in state and national history. A battery of state tests supports the reform. Although the state maintained that no invidious comparisons would be made, your community has made them. The superintendent has her feet to the fire on this issue, and now you too are feeling the heat. Recent test scores show that your students are not doing early as well in history as they are in science and mathematics. The superintendent has "requested" that you integrate the state curricular materials into the history program to correct the current deficiencies. Your history faculty, on the other hand, claim that this is exactly the wrong tack to take to develop inquiring minds. They are not overly concerned with the students' performance on thestate tests because they claim the tests measure the wrong thing. Parents, however, cannot understand why their children are not doing as well in history as they are in math and science; in fact, at the last board meeting the superintendent promised that the history scores would rise.
• What do students need to "know" about history?
• What is the role of rote memory in learning?
• What do the behavioral, cognitive, and constructivist perspectives on learning have to offer? • How does one achieve the right balance of teaching facts and teaching for discovery and understanding?

Motivation Challenge
For some reason this year, many of the students in your middle school classes seem defeated about learning. At a recent faculty meeting, teachers started to complain about their students: -They look at an assignment and protest--This is too long (too hard, too much)!? -We can‘t do this by tomorrow (Monday, next week)!? Because they don‘t exert much effort, of course, they prove themselves right every time-they can‘t do the work. Your teachers claim that neither pep talks nor punishments for incomplete work are making a dent in the students ‘defeatist attitudes. And the -I can‘t? seem contagious. Even the better students are starting to drag their feet, protest longer assignments, and invest minimal effort in class. Teachers also maintain that more students are having started to cheat on tests to save their sinking grades. A few teachers blame the negative attitudes on students from the -projects? who are in school this year because the other middle school in the district was closed and those students had to be redistributed. A cloud of despair seems to be hovering over the whole school. You are starting to dread Mondays. You need to show some leadership, and you begin by asking yourself these questions:
• Are these students "unmotivated"?
• Why might they be so pessimistic about learning?
• How can you help your teachers get a handle on this problem?
• What can you and your teachers do to change student attitudes toward their school work? • How can teachers get students to believe in themselves?
• What perspectives on motivation seem most useful?

Management Leadership Challenge
There are students from four different ethnic groups in the middle school -pod? you are working with this year. Last week, you added a student with pretty severe emotional/behavioral problems and a student with cerebral palsy to the group as part of an experiment in full inclusion. The boy with cerebral palsy is in a wheelchair and has some difficulties with language and hearing. Each of the four ethnic groups seems to stick together, never making friends with students from -outside.? When the teachers ask students to work together for projects, the divisions are strictly on ethnic lines. Many of the subgroups communicate in their native language-one you don‘t understand- and you assume that often the joke is on you because of the looks and laughs directed your way. Clarisse, the emotionally disturbed student, is making matters worse by telling ethnic jokes to anyone who will listen in a voice loud enough to be overheard by half the class. There are rumors of an ambush after school to -teach Clarisse a lesson. ? You agree she-and the whole class for that matter-needs a lesson, but not this kind.
• How would you structure the class to help the students feel more comfortable together?
• What are your first goals in working on this problem?
• Is conflict negotiation called for here? How would you handle the situation?
• How will these issues affect the grade-levels in your building?