Course Reflection

When looking back at my initial personal theory of learning, I realized that if I was going to become an effective teacher, I was going to have to take into account the many different learning styles of my students and try to incorporate as many of them into my lessons to get and keep my students engaged in their work.

During this course I got the chance to examine some different theories about how students learn. The one that caught my attention that most closely goes with my personal theory is Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. In this theory he describes nine different intelligences that every person possesses, only few of which can be measured by IQ tests (Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations, pg.24). Gardner believes that every person possesses some degree of the nine intelligences, but he goes on to describe how usually one or more of the intelligences dominate (Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations, pg.24). Gardner believes that a broader view of the intelligences of your students will change a teacher’s plan of instruction, because they would have to take these differences into account to maximize student learning (Lever-Duffy, J. & McDonald, J. (2008). Theoretical Foundations, pg.25). This is a belief I closely share. Through my first few years of teaching I have realized that students have different intelligences and learning styles, and to reach each students potential, I must provide them with opportunities to engage them in our activities using a wide variety of intelligences or learning styles that best suite them. I realized that many of my lessons that I have taught in the past were only appealing to a percentage of my students, and the rest desired to learn with some different forms of instruction. When I began to take this into account, my students have responded well and become more involved in my lessons. Instead of only reaching a certain number of students, I now have some sort of activities to grab the attention of most of my students. This is becoming more apparent as I begin to learn to use new technologies in the classroom. Many of the new technologies that can be used in the classroom have been developed to reach the different types of learners we may see in our classes. These technologies provide something for everyone, and this goes a long way in gaining and maintaining the attention of our students. As teachers it is our goal to reach all our students, and to do this we must take into account the different learning styles of our students when preparing lessons and activities to teach them the material we are trying to get a crossed to them. The new technology available to assist teachers in the classroom already does this for us, and is becoming a great tool to teach our students.

Some of the new technologies that I have discovered in this class are concept maps and virtual field trips. Before this course, I had no knowledge of either of these technologies to use in my classroom. I am a social studies teacher and can use concept maps for just about every lesson I teach. I love this because my students get to make connections from prior knowledge and connect to the new information they are learning. They get to see these connections and it gives them a better understanding of the material. Plus, I can put my students in charge in this activity, and this makes the students do the thinking instead of me pushing them to what I want them to say. I also found some great sites from this course for virtual field trips. This gives my students some hand on learning experiences that they would never get anywhere else. Students are not only getting new information, they are also getting visual that will help them retain the information being taught, and this will help more of our students succeed in class. I hope to incorporate these new types of activities into my classroom this year. I feel that this will help keep my students engaged, and since they will be running the class, they will be more invested in their work. I feel that this will make them want to learn in my class, and this is the most important thing when it comes to them retaining the information I am teaching to them.