Where am I going again?

  We were asked in class to write about something that we do with no apparent reason as to why we do it. Of course I would love to say I am perfect and do none of this but after racking my brain, I found that there is something I used to do all the time. I used to work for a school on the South side of Des Moines before and it was a route I traveled every day Monday through Friday. I found on many occasions that even when driving down E. 14th street as I approached my regular turn I found myself turning on my signal light to make the unnecessary turn. This would happen any time I came in close proximity to my previous workplace even on the weekends.
 
As soon as I noticed my signal light was on to turn and that cars behind me were slowing down I quickly accommodated my train of thought and continued on to where I was originally set to go. Now that it has been four months since having to make this daily commute, I no longer slow down or my signal light no longer turns on while approaching my old turn. I believe in these actions I am using CLT when I feel that I need to turn at that intersection as I had prior experience with this intersection for many years, and I had yet  to change my schema.I used CLT in order to accommodate my mode of thinking after no longer needing to make the turn at the intersection.  I still am struggling on how this would fit into the other learning theories and I believe I may be able to stretch it when I say DLT is used as this route is very familiar to me .

Thinking out Loud

Professor Kruse asked s this week to ask someone how they would solve a problem/thinking out loud as we did in on of our previous classes I asked my daughter who is in 2nd grade ths year about a math problem she was doing for the night's homework. In class they have been studying doubles plus two ex 4+6. When she told me how she solved ths problem she said she thought about solving 4+4 first and she knew that was eight from what she has been taught in the past. She said then he knew she had two more to add to that so she came up with 4+6=10. Right away I knew she was using CLT without realizing it. From her background knowledge of what 4+4= she then added the knowledge of adding on two more. May be a stretch but I think by her breaking down the math problem into more familiar terms she was using SLT. Now the use of DLT is still a struggle, I know tha when using DLT it is when it starts concrete and moves to more abstract, so not sure if when she was figuring the problem out and th7e problem of 4+4 was the more cncrete as that was what she already knew then moving to 4+6 without thinking and wrote the answer was the more abstrat part. Any thought?
educ#107

Teaching with SLT and DLT

In the past seven years I have worked with children from Kindergarten all the way up to fifth grade. I have seen good use of both SLT and DLT and through these experiences I have had, I have a good understanding of how I would use both in my future teaching. I am currently working on my reading and ESL endorsements and have worked in the ESL field for many years.  If I am teaching a 1st grade ELL class vocabulary, I would begin with a concrete object (realia) for the child to understand the meaning of the word and be able to put that English word to the actual object.
  We would begin to start with another small word such as like and we would begin to use this in a variety of sentences. Ex. I like to play, I like to eat, I like to run. In addition I could write the sentence on a sentence strip and have the children repeat on their own sentence strip. Then we would cut apart the whole words. From here we would then have "puzzle pieces" that have a word on them and we would practice to put the sentence together while saying the sentence.http://brainathonemporium.com/order/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=68_69&products_id=356
  From this as the child progress I could use SLT by beginning to engage other students repeating after me, I like apples. This would make me the more knowledgeable peer and gives the student a correct model of which to base their performance on. I would praise the children as they begin to come along in their sentence structure. EDUC#107

Developmental Learning Theory

      These last few class sessions in educ 107, we have gone over what exactly is DLT. I think back to my previous job as an ELL tutor/translator and how much I used DLT on a daily basis without knowing it. Breaking down the material for easier comprehension for my students, whether it was showing actual pictures (realia) or just going over in depth words, phrases that were not understood, then bringing it all back together so the student was able to undertand the question/assignment.
      I have seen many educators in my work experience as well as my college years not take this approach with DLT and many times they have students in their class sitting back and not able to comprehend anything that was just "taught". Many educators believe if they just talk at the student and not to the student they will eventually "get it", but we have found over and over that is not the case. We as future educators need to keep in mind that not all of our students are going to be able to learn in the same manner so we really need to try and differentiate our instruction to better fit the needs of our students.
      I believe if we use DLT in all aspescts of teaching our students will in turn have a better understanding of all subjects being taught.