Jean Piaget theorizes that intelligence is the ability to organize, adapt, and integrate knowledge into existing ideas about the world. He is famous for citing the "Four Stages of Cognitive Development”. He states that the teacher’s role is to organize the classroom environment, assess children’s thinking, and initiate group activities. 



Piaget has influenced my teaching in that I am more sensitive to children's developmental needs.A child learns in a fundamentally differnt way than an adult does. As a teacher, I will strive to ensure children have physical, social, and logical learning. I wholeheartedly agree that knowledge is worthless useless we can actually use and apply it. My goal is that my students will learn concepts from multiple perspectives, from the physical, social, and logical persectives. In this way, they will more fully understand, remember, and use information they have learned at school.

Teachers that truly know their students academic and developmental needs, and practice in depth planning strategies, will be setting their students up for success. TPA Task 4 required me to really go into depth looking at two individual focus students as well as at the entire class. (Artifact #7). Characteristics I studied include the following: linguistic background, academic language abilities, content knowledge and skills, cultural and health considerations, interests and aspirations, and physical, emotional, and social development. I was able to create a lesson that took into account all these factors. I made specific adaptations for my two focus students (an ELL student, and a highly distractible student) to ensure their success during this lesson. I used preferential seating, partnering, text organizers, hand signals, parental involvement, and desktop dividers. I had the experience of videotaping this lesson and putting it on a DVD.

Additionally, I learned about taking interest surveys and incorporating multi-cultural and community ideas into the classroom. In this program, I put together an SSR plan (Artifact #8) that incorporated the California culture of surfing into the SSR plan. This can be modified to suite the particular culture of each community. Additionally, I have created an Excel literature file to keep track of my classroom library. I have included books that cover a broad plane of interest, culture, and reading ability. I have included reading logs and recommendation sheets so that children can log their reading and share their favorite books with other students.