Information Processing

How does the teacher work with the students' information processing systems to promote learning? For example, how does the teacher focus students' attention, help them rehearse new information, and encourage them to encode and transfer information? Evaluate the teacher's use of wait time as part of this process. Cite specific examples and be sure to include a reference in your response.

The teacher I observe is really good about lecturing as little as possible. She usually introduces the new topic, and then has the kids do some sort of activity that helps them start to really understand the content. This works great because it keeps the students attention focused on the teacher for just a few minutes, so they don't really have time to get bored. One of the units I observed focused on how cells make up tissues, which make up organs, which make up organ systems, which make up organisms. On the first day of the unit, she had the kids do three or four activities that went over that same concept again and again to help them rehearse that new information. Then, every day of the unit she did some sort of activity that had the kids practice that concept. This was a good example of distributed practice throughout the unit. Since the activities the kids did each day were all different, it was a great way for the kids to transfer the information they remembered from the class before, to the new medium they were using that day. This link (http://thepeakperformancecenter.com/educational-learning/learning/memory/classification-of-memory/memory-process/) describes how encoding has the potential to lead to storage, and then to retrieval for future use. The activities used in class are a great way for the kids to encode information from the first time they learned the lesson, to then store the information through the fun activities, and then to retrieve the information in the class periods following the unit introductory lesson. The teacher I observed is also really good at using wait time in her process. Unlike the teacher in Ferris Bueller, she waits for the students to process the question before she prompts them to answer. Sometimes, if nobody seems to be inclined to answer, she will pull names from "the beaker of fate". Basically, she's been a really good teacher to observe because she is awesome at her job!