Elementary Vignette for Cognitive Learning Theory
Ms. Gregorio teaches 4th grade in a large, urban school district in the southwestern United States. Her school is linguistically diverse with as many as twenty languages other that English spoken by students. Because of the large number of different home languages, Ms. Gregorio must plan her lessons with the needs of linguistically diverse learners in mind.
1. Here are some of the teaching approaches that Ms. Gregorio routinely uses with her second language learners. For each approach, describe how a cognitive learning theory concept or concepts could be used to support or generate that teaching approach.
a. When she asks questions during a discussion, Ms. Gregorio makes sure to provide extra time for her second language learners to formulate their answers, because they are often translating her English question into their own language, and then translating back into English. If she rushes them, she can overwhelm them.
b. When Ms. Gregorio introduces new content, she spends time at the beginning providing background information and teaching new vocabulary to her second language learners.
c. Many of her students are just beginning to learn to read in English. To help them become independent readers, she teaches them to recognize when they don’t know a word in the reading assignment. They are then taught to use context, pictures, and any parts of the word they can sound out to determine what the word is. If they can’t do this, then they ask another student or teacher.
2. Although these teaching ideas were suggested for second language learners, do you think these are generally good teaching ideas for most if not all students? Why or why not?