Soltis and Santrock (Apr. 1)

Soltis, J. F., & Phillips, D. C. (2009). Perspectives on Learning. Chapter 1, Introduction. New York: Teachers College Press. p. 1-8.
Santrock, J. W. (2009). Educational Psychology. Chapter 1, Educational psychology: A tool for effective teaching. Focus on pp. 1-16; skim the rest.

Blog post: In this module, we turn our attention to the psychology of learning school subject matter. Subject matter refers to the content of school curriculum such reading, math, science, and so on. After doing the readings, describe 3 important questions you can think of related to subject-matter learning. Write several sentences about each question explaining why it is interesting to you.

1.My first question was how do I find a way to teach that helps my students learn best when one way does not work for all? When I am teaching a subject like math I understand that not everyone will catch on as fast, but I don’t want to go too slow where other students are not benefiting because they’re bored. I want to help all of my students learn and not to have them fail because of the way I am teaching. I want to find a middle ground where everyone can be happy.

2.My second question is how do I find a way to motivate my students to learn and want to come to class when they aren’t interested in the subject? I want to find a way to interest them in a subject like math or science so they will want to learn the material. If they don’t want to learn the material I am afraid they will fail and not try. If I am able to interest them maybe they will find something about the subject they wouldn’t of otherwise.

3.My third question is how do I help promote intrinsic motivation in math when so much of it is extrinsic? I know I will be given a set of grading guidelines that can push my students to be extrinsically motivated. Such as if they do poorly on a test, then after that they have to move on to study for the next test. That teaches them to not want to learn what they missed because they have other stuff to study for and they will probably only see a little of it on the exam. I want to allow them as many times as needed to succeed, but I don’t want them to not work hard the first time because they know they can make it up. I feel if I forget about what they did wrong then that makes it seem like it wasn’t important and they shouldn’t work hard to fix mistakes.