Summary for Mary, Rachel M., Allison W. and Susan

SORRY THIS IS LATE. WE DID IT LAST FRIDAY BUT I WAS JUST ABLE TO POST TO MOTHER BLOG.


It seems that both Susan, Rachel and I all were interested in the Maturation Theory and obviously in disagreement with it as most educators would be.Both Rachel and Allison seem to be able to draw and web together what some of the theories in these chapters state along with what they have learned in their child psychology courses. More specifically, Allison speaks about how she realizes that she is currently employing the Classical Conditioning theory in her own class as she teaches in a sequential order. Similar but different, Susan and I seem to be reflecting on our experiences with our own children in relation to these theories.

Allison brings up an intersting point as she dicusses Piaget's theories on the importance of play and how children learn through their direct experiences and social interactions with peers. The point she raises is that his research was done decades ago yet when you think about it his findings were the basis for what we still attempt to achieve today through pre-school education. Allison also points out that Piaget's theory regarding cognitive development is still useful today in helping teachers determine "age appropriate" activities. Susan touches on this same point as she relates a story about her daughter's experience in pre-school and the teacher's expectations for the class based on what she thought was age appropriate, even though Susan was skeptical. Susan was pleasantly surprised when the teacher turned out to be correct in determining what the class would be capable of achieving that year.

We all agreed strongly with The Theory of Literacy Development and Family Literacy Development. Rachel summed it up well when she said she that she felt there was a strong connection between home and school life and that children need to be exposed to reading and other forms of literacy at home as well as in school. Allison felt that in terms of these theories, "parents are not only needed to model fluency, but they should also model the practice of reading so that it becomes a habit to the child." Allison also liked the idea of giving a family survey so she could better understand where a child was coming from in terms of their literary exposure.

Rachel had some interesting comments on the Emergent Literacy Theory in that she said, "it makes sense that children who tend to be good listeners and speakers will be advanced when it comes to reading." She further added that "if they already have a strong foundation on a language, then being able to decode the written word will be easier because they can search their memory baks for words that they are already familiar with.

Vygotsky's Social COnstuctivism seemed to grab most of us in we all could relate as teachers or parents to understanding the "zone of prosimal development. Allison pointed out that this theory she feels is currently in the spotlight and I agree that in a system that is currently trying to become all inclusive, and understanding of Vygotsky's theory is critical. Allison pointed out that this is qute the challenge as a teacher being able to sucessfully differetiate instruction. I think we all concur with this point. Susan elaborated on this theory from another angle in relating how she as a teacher encourages group work in which she is able to act more as a facilitator and the students are able to assist each other or so to speak provide the scaffolding necessary when acknowledging the zone of procimal development. Allison stated that scafolding is part of her everyday teachin method, and Rachel believes that these practices take place even when you are not aware of them taking place.

Rachel, and Allison definitely agreed with the ideathat the process of decoding often bogs down the process of comprehension and ultimately the ability to improve reading skills. Susan complimented this with her comments on choosing texts as teachers that are neither to easy or too difficult, so that they are able to benefit the most from the content and have a pleasant reading experience, and ultimately that is what all these theories we have studies lead us to examine more, how do we make the reading process a most pleasant experience. I think we agree that it takes a mixture of a number of the ideas presented in these theories along with the collabrative efforts of educators, peers, and parents and all that interact with children.