Module 1: Positive Teacher-Student Relationships, Learning to Read, and Recess

Module 1

Concept 1: Teacher-Student Relationships

Summary: In Chapter 1, Learning, Teaching, and Educational Psychology section about teacher-student relationships, it stresses that making and encouraging positive relationships with students can improve student engagement. It was stated that “Even when the gender, ethnicity, cognitive ability, and behavior ratings of the student were accounted for, the relationship with the teacher still predicted aspects of school success” (Woolfolk, Pg. 8). There is a significant connection between teacher relationships and the overall success the student has within the classroom. Another important aspect mentioned in the text was “When teachers established warm, caring relationships with their students, similar to those of an extended family, the students were more engaged” (Woolfolk, Pg. 8). Positive and impactful relationships shape how much the student is going to participate in your classroom.

Reflection: With years of education under my belt, I tend to reflect on my decision to become a teacher. When people ask me “What made you want to become a teacher?” I often reply with “I want to make an impact on my students and strive for all of them to become successful in my classroom as well as outside of the classroom”. This response has a lot to do with me wanting to become a role model for my students, someone to look up too, someone who makes them want to come to school.  After reading this section in chapter 1, I realized that my past teachers that made an impact on me and my future, had these characteristics. They all encouraged me, cared for me, and made sure I was on the right track.

Throughout all of my years in education and I’m sure throughout your education, you’ve had a teacher who has had none of those qualities. These teachers are not encouraging and tend to force you to do work silently at your desk to get the grade they think you deserve. I have had my fair share of both teachers and from my personal experience, the encouraging and loving teachers get more of a positive feedback from their students. The students are eager to participate and express their own findings and opinions. When students trust their teachers, they can work through difficulties and problems they may be having within their classroom. In my previous college courses, my professors have expressed the importance of developing a personal relationship with the students to understand their interests and wants throughout their academic career. Many teachers have incorporated student’s interests into their lessons to make it more interactive and fun. When teachers do this, they will develop into someone the students can confide in as well. Having a teacher who can listen to you and your feelings can also be beneficial in many cases when working through behavioral problems that arise in the classroom environment.

It is crucial to have and establish a positive relationship with all of our students because this pushes them to WANT to do their work and STRIVE in the classroom. Positive relationships unveil successful and eager students. Having these relationships not only benefit the student, but their ability to learn and achieve.

Concept 2: The Brain and Learning to Read

Summary: In chapter 2, Cognitive Development, there is a section relaying information about how brain imaging research is giving us more information and revealing differences among skilled and less-skilled readers as they learn new vocabulary. “For example, one imaging study showed that less-skilled readers had trouble establishing high-quality representations of new vocabulary words in their brains, as indicated by ERP measurements of electrical activity of the brain” (Balass, Nelson, & Perfetti, 2010). Another important concept from this section was “Reading is not innate or automatic—every brain has to be taught to read” (Frey & Fisher, 2010). It is important to acknowledge that students who do not automatically understand the concept of reading/new vocabulary right away, it might just be because they are not processing it at the rate of other students.

Reflection: Teaching reading to students is complex and not a simple task that you can teach within a few weeks. Throughout my field experiences, I was placed in a kindergarten classroom. I had to teach eight different lessons, all of which pertained to reading. As we all know, students are never on the same level cognitively. Each student has their differences pertaining to their reading ability. Some students need teachers to guide them with identifying and reading new vocabulary words presented to them previously. “Reading is a complex integration of the systems in the brain that recognize sounds, written symbols, meaning and sequences, and then connect with what the reader already knows” (Wolf et al, 2009). This process tends to happen very quickly for students. 

In my field experience, I got to use some of the strategies that the book suggested. The book outlined multiple approaches that teach sounds, spelling, meanings, sequencing, and vocabulary through reading, writing, discussing, explaining, drawing, and modeling. All students learn in a different way. One lesson I got the opportunity to teach was an obstacle course in which there were different areas in the room to teach spelling different words and sounding them out. One station had hopscotch in which the students would spell sight words like “and” and “with” as they jumped. Another section of the obstacle course was to write the words “come” and “have” on the smart board. The students were also working on beginning letter sounds. I was fortunate enough to make a lesson where the students had a sheet with a letter on it and images of different items that their letter began with. They were all able to sound out the images and see if that matched their letter. Once the student filled up the sheet correctly, they could move on to a different letter. Within both of these lessons, I was there to guide students through their spelling and sounding out of letters. It was apparent that specific students needed extra help with both of these skills. It is important that we give students as many opportunities to learn new vocabulary with a wide variety of strategies incorporated into lessons.

For one of my finals, I had to list out some of the reading strategies that were valuable for all ages. Some of these included, repeated reading, choral repeated reading, scaffolded sustained silent reading, story mapping, paraphrasing, onset rime, sentence-word association and Elkonin boxes. Many of these strategies give students the chance to improve their reading comprehension, ability to process new vocabulary and sounds. In my opinion, I think giving students multisensory activities initiates a more eager and consistent student who wants to read. We as teachers need to make sure we are all giving input and developing new ways for students to read.

Concept 3: Play, Recess, and Physical Activity

Summary: This section in chapter 3, The Self, Social, and Moral Development, expresses the importance of play in a child’s physical development of the brain. Play is a way for students to explore their surroundings and adapt to new environments. Woolfolk stated in this section that “some neuroscientists suggest that play might help in the important process of pruning brain synapses during childhood” (Pellis, 2006). Play is crucial for students to develop new skills, become insightful and creative with their peers, especially during recess. “Play is particularly important for both children’s happiness and their social and cognitive development” (Hopkins, Dore & Lillard, 2015). Woolfolk stresses the importance of letting children develop these insights by playing complex game and participating in sports. This leads the children to learn cooperation, fairness, negotiation and developing more sophisticated language with peers.

Reflection: In a previous class at Trinity, I had come across positive and negative consequences. This section sparked up a debate about whether or not recess should be taken away as a punishment. In all of my past field experiences, recess was in fact a punishment for misbehaving in class or not following directions correctly. In my personal opinion, recess should never be taken away from a student. In fact, teachers should develop different ways to punish a student in a more positive way. Reported in a New York Times article, “77 percent of school principals report that they withhold recess as punishment, even as they simultaneously sing the praises of recess as a factor in academic, cognitive, and social development”. Since I am majoring in special education, it is reported that most of the students who are punished and have recess taken away are those with mild disabilities, usually being ADHD. Students who have recess taken away from them lose connection to peers and opportunities to learn a different behavior.

I believe that misbehaving students should in fact have a system in place to where if they become to distracting in class, they can have an alternative assignment. One idea is to have a student run an errand to another teacher. This gets them up and moving without escalating into more of a drastic behavior in class. Recess gives these students a chance to let out some steam and gives the brain stimulation. I think teachers tend to throw out consequences for their student’s actions and instead of trying to resolve them by talking or developing a plan to decrease the behaviors, they begin to take away valuable time where the student gets to run around and relieve some of that energy. We need to shed light on the idea that we need new strategies and techniques because recess is essential in student’s brain development as well as physical development.