Learning Theory

I have already spent ten hours in my classroom at Old Mill Elementary. It is so rewarding to serve in the classroom! One learning theory that I've noticed the teacher using is Constructivism. She does a great job of engaging the students in her classroom. One example of this is when they do Math worksheets. She will have them work in small groups and then as a class they will turn on the projector and the children can volunteer to come up and with the dry erase marker, show how they got their answer. One thing I like is that she doesn't just stop there. She will encourage any child who came up with the answer in a different way, to come up and share that with the class. This builds confidence with the children and teaches them that there are many different way to learn and problem solve. I've also observed that when she teaches a new concept, she asks many questions and almost has the class teach her. She then fills in where there are gaps. She uses many different tools to address the different developmental levels in her class. When teaching the water cycle, she had me use wiki sticks to outline the clouds, mountains, sun and a big circle representing the cycle on paper so that Mia, the blind student, could feel it on her paper and understand how the water cycle works.