Unit planning and learning theories

Through developing my unit plan, I have seen elements of our study of learning theories come into play. I think that I tend to relate more to cognativism than to the other learning theories, simply because it is the one that seems to make more sense to me as a classroom teacher. As I was writing this unit plan, I tried to approach the topic in such a way that it would relate to prior knowledge that students would have, encourage them to engage in the learning through interesting presentation (such as artistic expression and creating their own constellations, etc.), and allowing them to make some modifications to previous learning without stretching them beyond the scope of what would be reasonable for 6^th graders.

That being said, elements of social constructivism also play a role in this centers unit, as students will be working on individual products, but will have a group with which to communicate about ideas and to discuss their questions. Since the students would be discussing their reading, information gathering, etc. in their groups, this would lead to more life-long learning, because the students would not only be creating the products, but also having the conversations about their learning, which helps them to gain a greater understanding of the material than they might have gained on their own.

I have also found it interesting to take on the role of the media coordinator in this assignment rather than that of classroom teacher, as I’ve been accustomed to doing. I’ve found that playing the role of co-teacher is somewhat more challenging than I first had anticipated, because I’m trying to step into someone else’s ideas and make them my own, while maintaining the original integrity (does that make sense?). In other words, instead of creating my own lesson entirely from scratch, I had to begin with what the cooperating teachers had in mind and work with that to create an effective lesson that would steer students in the right direction. After my introductory lesson, I would then take on more of a co-teacher role and help students in the information seeking process using the resources both online and in the library.

Overall, I think the project was an effective way to get me to approach my new role as media coordinator. Since I developed this unit with my team teacher, we will be using it next year, so I’ll be interested to see how it actually plays out with the students. Things never quite go as planned in the classroom, especially with middle schoolers, but that’s usually what makes it most fun!