November 2nd, 2011

The F.A.T. City Workshop

part two of two

 

This post goes back to October 31st, sorry for the late entry.. life gets hectic sometimes!

So as you can probably tell from the title, this post is the second of two entries to do with the "F.A.T. City Workshop". The video is about 70 minutes long, so it took us 2 and a bit classes to finish it. In this particular class we learned about:

The Four Main "Mistakes" Which Teachers Make:

1. they say "look harder". - when saying this what do teachers really expect the student to do?? I don't understand.. are they assuming the student didn't look "hard enough" in the first place...? It just seems redundant. 

2. the use bribery. - this actually does work, sometimes.. but you shouldn't have to bribe your students to do their work, they should want to do it. This technique can also be called "positive reinforcement", because the teacher is "adding something" (or at least that's how I remember it from grade 11).

3. they take things away. - like bribery, this technique can sometimes work.. like for example when you tell your child if they don't behave they wont get a snack.. it usually works, but obviously you can't threaten your students like you would your child. This is also called "negative reinforcement", because the teacher is "subtracting something" (yet again, just my memory from Psych AP in high school).

and finally, 4. they "blame the victim". - some teachers tell the student they "aren't motivated/aren't trying"... no offence to the teacher, but how exactly does he or she know what is going on in the student's head.. this is just plain ignorance. 

Learning disabilities are about perception!

• learning disabled children often get into trouble and have no idea what they did wrong, because the teachers don't tell them.. they assume it is obvious. 

In Psychology 35 AP, in high school, we learned about something called "tip of the tongue phenomenon", it sounds very similar to a "problem" we just learned about in Ed. Psych. called "dysnomia". Both disorders cause the subject to have problems retrieving specific words from the "word bank" in their brains. So, I wonder, are they the same thing or maybe slightly different?

Associative Tasks vs. Cognitive Tasks 

• Associative Tasks: people can do 2 or more "associative tasks" at once.

- associative tasks can include: driving, talking... anything that does NOT take full concentration. 

• Cognitive Tasks: people can only do 1 "cognitive tasks" at a time. 

- cognitive tasks can include: driving in a snow storm, writing a test... anything that DOES take full concentration. 

I would like to close this entry with a question:

In your opinion, should children with severe learning disabilities be integrated into classrooms with children who learn "normally", or do you think this integration will cause more problems than possibilities?