Growth Mindset and Motivation TIPR

I am working in a Life Skills class in a high school with students ranging from 9th to 12th grades. The teacher in the class has a great rapport with the students and they really respect him. The classroom environment is relaxed and comfortable. The students seem to know that they are valued and important to the teacher, the staff, the school administration, and the peer tutors who work with them. 

I believe that the teacher helps to promote a growth mindset for his students by giving them opportunities to participate and he praises the students for their efforts, for both correct and incorrect responses. I was working with a student last week and after he answered a question he'd tell me how smart he was. I loved it!

The main extrinsic motivator that is used for the students in the class is a token economy using fake dollar bills. When the students return from their general education classes with a good behavior report, they earn a dollar bill and at the end of the week they can buy a prize from the class store. By earning the money for positive behavior, the students can learn to cultivate their  self-actualization skills by having a desire to consistently improve their performance and behavior. 

 All of the students in the class need extensive help in every area, but especially in academics. Teaching the students to have a growth mindset is imperative in helping them to feel confident in their abilities. The teacher uses a sense of relatedness in his classroom by showing them respect and by genuinely liking them. The students' need for competence is met by being told repeatedly that they are capable and intelligent. 

I addressed the students' needs when I taught my lesson by showing each student a sense of relatedness by valuing each students' response to the questions that I asked. I felt like I touched upon the students' need for competence by giving lots of positive praise to each student and their comments and answers to the questions I asked during my lesson.  

Identity TIPR

The children that I observed in the elementary school resource classroom were in the Industry v. Inferiority: fourth stage of Erikson's psychosocial development. The students in the class had some level of a learning difficulty that led them to be behind their peers in the general curriculum classroom. The students all exhibited signs of a feeling of inferiority at times probably due to a lack of success during this stage of development, and likely due to a lack of success in previous stages of development, as well. Some of the children put the assignments they were given down, others put themselves down. One boy avoided the work as much as possible by putting his head down, getting up to get a drink, wanting to give the teacher a hug, or complaining that his stomach hurt. He had the most difficulty with each subject than any of her other students.
I believe that Marcia's theories of Identity diffusion and Identity foreclosure were shown by the students in the class. The student who avoided his work the most was exhibiting Identity diffusion. There were a few students who were the class clowns and made jokes about the assignments and in so doing, exhibited Identity foreclosure. The teacher was very patient with the students and made positive, encouraging comments that helped them to refocus and to try again when something was difficult for the students. When T wanted to avoid his work by getting a drink, she let him get one after he had done a problem and then she asked him to do more problems after he sat back down in his seat.

The students all needed to gain some level of competence and confidence in their abilities to perform the tasks that were asked of them. I believe that with more time, effort, and a lot of patience, the majority of the students will be able to feel some level of Industry, rather than inferiority. There were at least two students with an Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) that may not catch up to their peers, but they can continue to progress in their knowledge of the core subjects that they are taught. I believe that the teacher helped the students to successfully navigate toward Industry by encouraging them when they struggled, reteaching tricky concepts with more clarity, and giving positive praise to them when the were successful.

I was aware of the student's particular needs when I taught my mini-lesson and I did my best to accommodate them. I spoke loudly and clearly, checking the students' reactions for understanding. I differentiated my lesson for T by writing single digit multiplication problems with 1, 5, and 0 while I taught the other students The Box Method with 2 by 2 digit multiplication problems on the board. I checked each student's work and helped those who needed more instruction and I gave positive praise to each student as they worked.

Information Processing TIPR

The teacher that I observed in the resource classroom gave each student the same book to follow along with, which helped to strengthen their iconic memory, and she had each student take turns reading the book, which helped to strengthen their echoic memory in their sensory memory. Both of these techniques worked together to build each student's perception and helped with dual-coding by allowing them to experience both audio and visual images. The book that they read took several sessions to complete, so the teacher used distributed practice by spacing their study of the book throughout a few days. She helped the students to encode the information the students learned to working memory through elaborative rehearsal by asking the students to relate things the already knew to the text they were reading. 

The students in the resource classroom were there for reading instruction. When a student struggled to read a word, another student would jump in and help read the word. It was nice to see them help each other, but I would have liked to see how a wait time would benefit the struggling student. By being 'rescued,' the student didn't need to sound the word out, or even look at the word for any significant amount of time, so there was less of an opportunity to use dual-coding, chunking, or iconic memory, to help encode the information into their working memory.

When I taught mu mini lesson, I was aware of the problems that each student struggled with, and I did my best to incorporate a wait time into the students' reading opportunities. It was difficult to change a pattern that had already been set by the teacher, but I gently asked the other students not to respond as quickly as they were used to. Then the struggling student had a better chance to use chunking to read the word, which allowed for more focused attention on the word being read. I believe that by utilizing a wait time, the students were better able to encode the information into their working memory.

Piaget TIPR

In my field experience in an elementary school classroom, I have seen the teacher use adaptation when teaching writing to her students. She taught them the writing process by drawing on the information they'd attained from the outside word, specifically Lagoon. She assimilated their prior knowledge into a current, collaborative assignment about their experiences at Lagoon. One of the ways she accommodated the assignment for one of her students who hadn't been to Lagoon was to help him to recall experiences at another amusement park so that he felt like he could participate in helping with an assignment about a place he hadn't been to before. In a resource class, the students are already in a state of disequilibrium, not being able to understand and assimilate new information. The teacher was so good at bridging the gaps in the student's learning by teaching with bringing in pertinent prior knowledge and concepts with new content.

The students all had needs in these areas to varying degrees because it was a resource classroom. I believe that the teacher should continue to teach the students who struggle with disequilibrium and assimilation with the content they are being taught. Equilibration should be a common goal among teachers so that all students can find balance and can keep developing and growing within the world around them.

When I taught a mini lesson to the students in the class,  I was very aware of the challenges that each student struggled with and I did my best to tailor my instruction to their academic needs. I adapted the content of the math lesson and I tried to use equilibration to help each student  understand the multiplication problems we were working on. I assimilated previous content the students had been taught to the new content I was focusing on. I believe the lesson was a success and that the students were able to increase their knowledge of the math curriculum that I taught them.