Module 4

Chapter 9 was all about metacognition, and a breakdown of how to appropriately approach students to teach the use of metacognition in school. Metacognition is the ability to know your personal thinking processes and utilizes them to manage cognitive processes (i/e comprehension of material and solving problems) (Woolfolk 328). One thing I believe after reading the chapter is that it is going to be very important as a teacher to understand the cognitive baseline of the age group you are teaching in order to adequately develop their metacognitive capabilities. Younger students’ minds are less developed than older students. One way to get younger students to begin the metacognitive awareness process is by using the KWL stage. With this method, it is encouraged to ask the students what they already know, what they want to learn, and in the end, what they did learn from the studied materials. (Woolfolk, 330). By asking the two questions before, it heightens the student intrinsic motivation to pay attention to problem solve.

I also enjoyed the breakdown of problem-solving. I never thought about the process of problem-solving. I realize know that one of my biggest detriments in my problem-solving abilities in a classroom, even to this day, is my ability to incorporate a means-end analysis. I tend to look at a problem as a whole, instead of in its parts. I feel that if I was taught to incorporate a means-end analysis in my work, I may not have suffered from so may cognitive overloads which hindered my grades.

In Chapter 10, we learned about cooperative learning and constructivism in the classroom. There are two type of constructivism, cognitive and social. Cognitive constructivists focus on the inner psychology of an individual. In other words, these individuals use what they know to impose intellectual structure (Woolfolk 373.) Social constructivists are more interested in learning through public knowledge of a subject. (375). Vygotski was a social constructivist that believed that individual development increases through social interaction. (Woolfolk 374,375). I would have to agree with Vygotski. It is important as an educator to be aware of this importance of social interaction in the school envoronment, especially in the younger grades because of the limited social interaction the majority are involved in outside the classroom.

Which leads to Cooperative learning. With cooperative learning, students are broken down into small groupd of 4-6 members, engaging in peer learning to create a shared learning environment and complete tasks successfully in a social interactive manner. (Woolfolk 386). As a PE teacher it is going to be incredibly important to understand how to set up highly structured cooperative learning environments.