1. Teacher Tony's Long Division Problem
Teacher Tony is introduced as a teacher struggling to help students understand long division. He explains that his class is having trouble learning the concept.
Teacher Tony is concerned about teaching long division.Most of his students can't seem to understand the concept and how to do it.Teacher Tony needs help.
I can't get my students to learn long division.
2. Understanding Cognitivism in Teaching
Cognitivism is introduced as a learning theory focused on how the mind processes information. The transcript explains key classroom examples such as hooks, review quizzes, chunking, and graphic organizers.
Why don't you use cognitivism to help you teach a difficult subject like long division?
Cognitivism is a learning theory that focuses on how information is received, organized, stored and retrieved by the mind.
cognitivism views the mind as an information processor like a computer.For example, in the classroom, instruction should be organized, sequenced, and presented in a manner that is understandable and meaningful to the learner.Cognitivism emphasizes retention and recall through the use of quality teaching practices.
You've probably seen cognitivism at work and didn't even know it.Cognitivism is often used in developing classroom lessons and and helping students learn higher order thinking skills.Common examples Starting a lesson with a hook to create interest.Activating prior knowledge by beginning a lesson with a review quiz.
Chunking information into comprehensible and digestible parts.
Using graphic organizers to help structure and relate content.
These are all examples of cognitivism at work in a classroom.
3. Applying Cognitivism to Long Division
Teacher Tony applies cognitivist principles by identifying prerequisite skills and sequencing instruction. He also uses a mnemonic and a color-coded poster to support student memory and understanding.
Now let's see if we can apply the principles of cognitivism to help solve Teacher Tony's problem.First, Teacher Tony needs to decide what skills students need in order to understand long division.After thinking, Teacher Tony found that in order to understand long division, students should know basic multiplication, basic division, and how to subtract numbers.Sequencing instruction by teaching prerequisite skills such as multiplication, simple division, and subtraction first will help students build upon prior knowledge to better learn how to do long division.
Teacher Tony prepares two things to help his students.He creates the mnemonic device Dead Monkeys Smell Bad to help students remember the steps of long division.Divide, multiply, subtract, bring down.He also creates a color coded poster that walks students through the long division process step by step.If students get stuck, they can look at this poster to help cue their memory.
4. Results and Teaching Takeaways
The students improve after the new teaching approach is used, showing better understanding and recall. The transcript closes by encouraging viewers to use cognitivism for difficult concepts.
After implementing these principles of cognitivism, Teacher Tony's students are doing a much better job of understanding, retaining and recalling the long division process.
Using cognitivism really helped my students learn long division.
If you are wanting to teach difficult concepts to your class, you can use cognitivism to help solve your problems.Just like Teacher Tony.
