Readings for January 17th

I really enjoyed the readings this week, because they exposed very interesting points of view on topics such as how teachers understand of students learn, what is necessary in a learning environment for ESL students, and how children will surprise even the most certain teacher.

Overall I feel the learning theories laid out for us in the Tompkins chapter really appeal to my personal understanding of how students learn. Of course, that is the intention of this portion of the chapter, but I feel that it has really taken the complexity that is how children learn and described it in a simplistic way. I personally feel there is not a sole way of learning, and no teacher will ever be able to pin one student to one specific category alone. Different aspects of each of these four theories have reared their heads in my personal education, and in the education that I have been witness to throughout my teacher prep. program.

I found myself thinking back to these learning theories as I was reading the Leland article about Kim's classroom. Those students demonstrated both the constructivism and sociolinguistics theories, and I really believe their learning would not have been as successful if they had not utilized both of these theories. I am a firm believer that multiple theories should exist, but should be developed to work together. I have never known a student to exhibit learning from one theory, and strongly believe I never will.

Each of these articles have exposed different reasons for using different methods with different students. For example, the Gibbons chapter discusses the "banking" model and the "progressive" model. The "banking" model suggests that students are empty vessels and need to bank or store the information that is fed to them by teachers. The "progressive" model suggests that students begin in the center of the learning arena and teachers set up and provide the most efficient and beneficial learning experiences. The Leland article shows how the students of the classroom not only use the theories demonstrated in the Tompkins chapter, but how they are an example of the "progressive" model.

It took me reading through most of the articles to really recognize how often each articles individual topics came up in the other articles. I could not help noticing all of these connections, and how other theories really borrow from previous theories. Overall, the point of these articles is for teachers to fully understand how their students learn, and to utilize the vast theories available to tailor their teaching for every type of student.