How Do People Learn

Topic: What developmental differences do you see in children in the classroom?

I did my field work in Spanish Fork in a self contained classroom.  The teacher has set up the classroom with a daily routine of ten workshops made up of some worksheets and some hands-on puzzles.  I spent individual time with each student and observed there learning modalities.  The first child, a boy in second grade was always the first in the class to finish his work shops.  I think this says that his learning modality is both visual and kinesthetic because he does well on both the worksheets and the puzzles without much aid from the teacher.  The second child, a girl, also in second grade rarely finishes her workshops at all with out continues one-on-one assistance, however I found that the worksheets for her took much longer than the hands-on puzzles.  This says to me that her learning modality is more kinesthetic and less visual.

The second thing I observed in the classroom was the learning theory of behaviorism.  In my learning theories paper, I researched a particular type of behaviorism where a child could be encouraged to make a choice based on positive or negative reinforcement.  In my field work, I saw this every day, it is how the teacher controlled each child's individual behavior.  One example of this is the hard worker bell; the teacher sets a timer for 5 minutes and when it goes off she selects a student who is working hard to choose a treat.  The treat is then passed out only to the children who are working hard.  A second example of this is free choice; at the end of the day for about 20-40 minutes the teacher allows free choice to those students who have worked hard and finished their workshops.  If a child hasn't finished their workshops they must finish them in order to have free choice.  These are only two examples of a very well designed classroom.