Final Learning Log

What?
When I took the quiz I found that I was very close between all three theories, but cognitive came out on top. I am a firm believer in the cognitive theory. I like the definition of cognition, "the act or process of knowing in the broadest sense; specifically, an intellectual process by which knowledge is gained from perception or ideas". I think that the way that children learn best is through schema, which is prior knowledge. I think that students need topics to be related to things that they already know. The brain plays a big part in my learning theory. Learning is effected by the way that the information is being processed. The knowledge has to go through certain steps in order to be retained. First the knowledge or content has to go through the sensory register, if the knowledge is related to something the student already knows it is encoded and then attention takes place or the knowledge is lost. If attention takes place then the content is put into Working memory. The content must be made sense of before it goes into Long term memory. Transferring from working memory to long-term memory is called in-depth processing which is connecting new knowledge to prior knowledge.

So What?
Knowing the process that the brain takes to store information will help me to determine how to teach certain things and how to get the students to retain the information. One thing that I will need to do is get the students attention so the information can go into the working memory and then I need to relate the information to something concrete in the students life.

Now What?
My learning theory needs a lot of work. As times goes on and I begin teaching my theory will evolve. I would like to learn more about the brain. I think the the human brain is the most fascinating thing in the world. I want to learn different things about the lobes and how certain things affect parts of the brain. I also want to learn more about the other theories, and try to implement things from them into my own theory.