Jonathan Paul Loomis

April 29, 1999

Psychology of Education

Dr. Fox

All sessions are with the Fifth Grade Class at Hyde Elementary School of Georgetown, DCPS.

10am to 3:30pm

• Worked with two students on reading
• Played basketball at recess
• Helped teach math (long division)
• Taught a lesson on early North American Explorers

8am to 3:30pm

• Reviewed math homework
• Chaperoned a field trip to Mount Vernon that included the fourth grade class

8:30am to 1pm

• Worked on standardized test practice
• Worked with two students on reading
• Helped one student with general organizational skills
• Worked with one student on instruction writing skills
• Had the students finish a previous map project on the Chesapeake Bay
• Made photocopies (always an important teacher task)
• Helped make a grading rubric for a standardized writing test

Noon to 3:30pm

• Worked on equality of fractions
• Did a project on the difficulty of cleaning up an oil spill

8:30am to Noon

• Judged science fair projects/presentations
• Observed on the playground

For the second part of this paper I have elected to write about one or two episodes that I found to be particularly interesting from each day that I was at Hyde. In each case I have tried to relate these episodes to our course work in some way.

During AU's Winter Break I did a lesson on Marco Polo, Iban Battuta, the Crusaders, the Vikings, and others in January. Just before this particular day I helped design a lesson in which the students wrote letters to the King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella under the assumed identity of Columbus to convince them to lone money for a voyage of discovery. The design was to make them think critically about Columbus' needs at that particular period in history while at the same time forcing them to develop their ability to write convincing arguments. Writing is always a good activity in and of itself. I was particularly proud of this assignment because it brought together these two seemingly separate skills.

In contrast to this lesson was a failed attempt at lesson planning that took place on the 17^th. In the late afternoon I took over the class and taught my lesson on early North American explorers. It took more time than I had expected to complete a map demonstrating where the French, English, and Spanish claims were, but I tried to push things along. One of my pet peeves is that I think Mary Ann moves too slowly. Then again, when looking back on my lesson perhaps I moved too fast. I had the students switch over the to back side of their paper to make the chart of the seven explorers I had selected, but there was no real opportunity for them to interact with any material. In general I was simply feeding them empty information. I got the sense that not much of it would sink in. The map maybe because it was a clear graphic and I had them color it themselves, but not the information about the explorers, except perhaps to later recognize that they'd once heard the names. The best part of the activity was at the end when I had some students pass around atlases and we looked for place names in the United States with Spanish or French origins. They got into this brainstorming activity I think mostly because they were given the freedom to scan over the entire page of the map. Although to me this seemed like a minor bit of freedom was obviously enough for them at the time because we worked on this particular aspect of the project for about twenty minutes without losing anyone to their daydreams.

In short, the major problem between these two social studies lessons was that one was based firmly in cognitive development and the other in lower order thinking skills. There is a far difference between having fifth grade students play out the role of Columbus by challenging them to think as another person and standing up in front of the class and dictating facts without giving them some reason for learning them or making it in some way relative to their lives. In a minor way the atlases did this, which was the saving grace of the lesson.

On the bus ride to Mount Vernon I chose to sit towards the back of the bus where most of the fifth graders had congregated and far from the other teachers. We had a few other chaperones on the trip with us: two parents, a student teacher, a teacher's aid. I ended up in the middle of a collection of the girls from my class, which didn't seem to bother them much as they went right on with their normal conversations as if I hadn't been there.

One of the girls had gone to the hairdresser the night before and had gotten fake braids put in. I thought they looked good on her and told her as such, but they were also a point of conversation as one of them came out early in the morning and was passed around for the remainder of the day. These girls coming of age are both humorous, in that I often laugh to myself to remember being their age, and interesting because they represent very clear examples of students making an important developmental transition. I inquired while we were on the bus if one of the girls still carried around a photo of her favorite member of N-Sync, a popular music group right now. She was exceptionally proud of this photo last fall and I wanted to know if it was still important to her. As it turns out, it's not; she has grown up to bigger and better things.

This particular episode is very indicative of the developmental change that most girls go through around age ten to twelve and that was the subject of a great deal of discussion at the beginning of the course. In each of the various theories the concept of growth was addressed, but based on what I saw on the 18^th and in subsequent days at Hyde, I would have to say that I agree most strongly with those theories that promote the concept of tremendous growth spurts, both physically and mentally. This is not to say that children don't grow at other stages, only that their growth at this age is much more dramatic.

The class had been doing work during the previous week on fractions with the student teacher, who was basing her teaching mostly on hands on fraction charts. She was ill this particular day and the regular teacher expressed a desire to "really get down to business" on the fractions. I interpreted this to mean that there would be no more fooling around with crayons and charts, but that she would do a more teacher directed instruction of the material. This struck me as all right because it would work well as a wrap up, the students already having done the more cognitive work with the student teacher.

I wandered the room observing and working one-on-one for most of the lecture while the regular teacher worked with them as a group. Towards the end of the allotted time for math I noticed that they were having a hard time applying the abstract concept of 1/2 = 2/4 towards something concrete. In a sense, they were capable of thinking about such a concept, but not yet able to use it, a good example of students on the edge between being concrete operational and formal operational thinkers. To rectify this problem I interceded in the lesson and had the class count the number of students in the room, which as I had already determined was the handy total of twenty. Then, using that as a base to work from I asked them to give me the number of students sitting at one particular table, four. I then demonstrated how this could be turned into the fraction 4/20, and then 2/10, and finally 1/5. I noted a marked change in the way many of the students seemed to be interacting with the material once I had created a concrete example for them to visualize.

Upon reflection I think that if I had to teach this lesson from the beginning I would start with this concrete task, perhaps by having the students spread around the room and then form groups of equal numbers. Then, because they know how to make such teams already it would be a bridge by which I could guide them towards realizing that they teams they made represented fractions of a whole. I this way I think I would start with the concrete operations which they have already mastered and move scaffold them to the formal operations which are more difficult. Only then would I introduce charts and written numbers.

After math we did a very enjoyable science project. The basic objective was to demonstrate to the students how difficult it is to clean up an oil spill. Each table was given some bowls of water with bits of plastic glitter/confetti to simulate plants and animals and then cooking oil was added to the bowls. The groups had a small sponge, some paper towel, and a spoon with which to try to separate the oil out of the water. Mary Ann had a hectic time with this experiment because she wants them to be a little bit more quiet and organized than I see the need for. At first I just observed they various ways they went about getting the oil out, mostly a direct attack method. Later on in the project I stopped at the tables one by one and asked some probing questions like "Where is most of the oil, on the top or bottom of the water?" Only a few of the students really paid any attention to these questions and rethought their strategies. One of our very restless children did ended up being the object of a fair amount of praise from me because he concentrated and really worked at coming up with a way to remove the oil while leaving as much water as possible. Although I only asked my questions intuitively at the time I believe now I was looking for the students to demonstrate decentration.

This particular Wednesday was interesting to me because I sort of came to an epiphany about the way children play in connection to the way in which they construct schemata. For the past two years I've always been impressed with the fact that the students on the playground no not really have a set concept of where their games begin and end. Of course there are some boundaries, such as on the basketball court, or with goals for the soccer games, but in general the children don't seem to have a concept of where one game starts and another begins. In many cases various groups of children will play games that fully overlap in physical area but are separate concept. This is often the case with games of football and tag which both require the large open area of the playground.

After observing this for some time I came to the conclusion that the reason the children do not have a well established sense of boundaries is because their schemata is not yet well constructed, not because our playground is small and necessitates this overlap. There are a number of specific examples where I was able to actually see teachers and supervisors jump-start this construction of schemata in regards to the way the children play. On one occasion a first or second grader chased a stray soccer ball through the basketball court. When seeing this, a teacher chastised the student for "interrupting" the other game and told the student that next time he should go around the court to pick up the ball on the other side. I watched all this and what struck me the most was that the second grader was entirely amazed that he had done something wrong. It never occurred to him that running through the other game was a problem.

I think that our elementary aged students might be capable of higher order thinking at younger ages if we didn't force them to construct schemata of boundaries. I think that when they build up schema that says, for example, the line around the basketball court fully encompasses the basketball game and no other game will enter that perimeter, that this schema teaches them to build up other boundary schema as they grow. This, I believe, helps lead students to believe that math and science are separate events and concepts, that school and life are disconnected, or that recess and class are not related.

I think that teaching our students to build up these boundaries in a physical sense (on the playground or in the classroom) will inhibit early construction of conceptual boundaries that inhibit cross-curricular learning and cognitive thinking. Instead, we should make an effort to ignore our own schemata of boundaries and build an environment that encourages students to think of events as overlapping.

To implement this theory students should not be reprimanded for playing in what appears to us as overlapping areas on the playground. Classrooms should be structured in that the library corner can become the math corner, or the science corner, etc. Student events inside the classroom should overlap as well. The teacher should downplay the importance of students having particular desks. Students should be able to use whichever desk is available at the moment and is convenient for the project at hand. If at all possible desks should be eliminated in favor of tables. In whichever case, these should be moved about at will to facilitate different activities.

In conclusion, I believe that students whose thinking is not restricted by boundary schemata are more likely to develop patterns of higher order cognition earlier in life. Students are born this way, and only learn that concepts and events must have boundaries as they grow. Elementary educators can take advantage of this natural state by avoiding constructing boundaries for their students, rather letting the students build necessary boundaries for themselves.