I was most surprised by Madeline Hunter’s Model that included methods of engaging students. In particular, the description of the anticipatory set intrigued me. After having read about this, I began to realize that I had been accustomed to hearing anticipatory sets frequently, although at the time I did not know that is what it was called. I have had many teachers give their personal examples about a topic in order to intrigue my class’ attention. Just last week, when going over procedures for one of my classes, my professor began to tell a few first-hand stories about students who had not followed the procedures she was about to explain, and where it led them. This interesting opener caused for the whole class to be more interested in the procedures to follow than if she would have begun by reading from a list at the start of class.
I feel very comfortable with the “cooperative learning” aspect of Robert Marzano’s Model. It is my goal to enter the education profession at an elementary age level, and because of this I feel prepared to engage students in interactive activities. Students at a young age need to move around and talk to learn, therefore, I do not foresee having issues applying this aspect of the model into my classroom one day. As for what I am least comfortable with, I would have to say “attention” in John Keller’s model. As I was saying kids’ attention spans can be rather short at points during a long day of learning, so I feel that making an environment to keep kids engaged will be difficult. However, I plan to use “cooperative learning” to make learning a bit more interesting for my students.
The main idea the articles we were assigned to read this week was to introduce us to different classroom structures for learning. The reason for my thinking this is because each the three people we read about created teaching models. Whether learning is being done online, or in a traditional classroom, these stages of learning are still applicable. The main thread that ran through Hunter, Marzano, and Keller’s Models was that there are multiple approaches to teaching from start to finish, but that in the end the same knowledge should be attained.
The Techie Teacher 