Social Cognitivism is something that is easily used in theatre. How we behave in theatre or in our day to day life is picked up intentionally or not and may end up being used in a performance. So how can we use those behaviors that we observe to our benefit?
One thing that Ms. Brugger, the teacher I am observing, does to teach this to her class is she modeled for them how she wants the class to give feedback on someone's performance. She did it herself to begin with, giving sandwich style feedback (something good, something they can improve on, and then something good). She then explained the benefits of giving feedback this way, that it allows students to feel confident in their work and also gives them something to be working on as they continue to fix their performance. She then had the students try it as the following students got up gave their performance. Calling on students to give feedback, in the style that she modeled. She would then ask the student who got the feedback how that feedback made them feel. The students gave a positive response and it made them feel more confident in their performance. I also observed that the students that followed went into their performance with more confidence because they knew that overall they would be able to feel good about the work that they did. It created a vicarious reinforcement that if they give a good performance, they will feel better about the feedback they receive.
The above example goes hand in hand with this article, which if you scroll down to "the intervention" section you can start to read how social cognitivism and theatre go hand in hand. It states "we can learn by observing others and by receiving feedback from others." Theatre is one of those subjects that is very opinionated and in the real world, you really can get a role or job based off of your looks and abilities. So through social cognitivism, we can observe what is appropriate behavior and receive that necessary feedback to excel in our position.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Information Processing
Processing information is a very important skill that teachers need to understand in order to have students understand the material they are taught to be remembered as time goes on. I have seen a lot of different examples from my teacher that I have observed this semester to help get students focused on the material and remember it for the long haul.
One example that my teacher does is the raising her hand above her head and counting down from 5-0 to gain the students attention. This increases students awareness of their surroundings and helps them know that they are losing focus and need to regroup their thoughts. Also the teacher has laid out that if they are still being disruptive after she gets to 0, they have the chance to lose participation points, adding a level of fear that is controllable for both the teacher and the student. This link is a great reference to see how this simple tool of counting down can help get students focused.
Ms. Brugger also allows her students to work together in pairs or groups often to help go over material that they learn. This way the students are practicing both maintenance and elaborative rehearsal by repeating to each the material over and over again while also connecting material to other outlets.
With theatre, we draw from many real world experiences to give us motivation, meaning, influences, ect. So naturally in the classroom, the lessons tend to get connected to real world material for the students to connect to. Ms. Brugger always tried to connect her lessons to something happening in the world today so the students can understand how powerful the material we are learning is and so they can start to make their own connections and encode in their brains how what they are learning can be applied to something. With monologues, referring it to a job interview, and being able to talk comfortably in front of someone or a group of people. The skills needed to do both are the same and can easily be transferred from one to another.
Wait time is something that can be awkwardly important. We don't like these awkward pauses in our discussion, but it gives students time to think for themselves and digest the information. Ms. Brugger even told me in her comments on my lesson that I taught for her class that I needed to give more time to allow students to think and respond, as well more time for them to quiet down to listen. She explained to me the importance of making sure everyone is on the same page and that while everyone may appear fine on the outside, in their heads they are all processing the information differently and needed different amounts of time to think. It's better to wait longer and let everyone process than to only allow half the class to understand it.
Ms. Brugger also allows her students to work together in pairs or groups often to help go over material that they learn. This way the students are practicing both maintenance and elaborative rehearsal by repeating to each the material over and over again while also connecting material to other outlets.
With theatre, we draw from many real world experiences to give us motivation, meaning, influences, ect. So naturally in the classroom, the lessons tend to get connected to real world material for the students to connect to. Ms. Brugger always tried to connect her lessons to something happening in the world today so the students can understand how powerful the material we are learning is and so they can start to make their own connections and encode in their brains how what they are learning can be applied to something. With monologues, referring it to a job interview, and being able to talk comfortably in front of someone or a group of people. The skills needed to do both are the same and can easily be transferred from one to another.
Wait time is something that can be awkwardly important. We don't like these awkward pauses in our discussion, but it gives students time to think for themselves and digest the information. Ms. Brugger even told me in her comments on my lesson that I taught for her class that I needed to give more time to allow students to think and respond, as well more time for them to quiet down to listen. She explained to me the importance of making sure everyone is on the same page and that while everyone may appear fine on the outside, in their heads they are all processing the information differently and needed different amounts of time to think. It's better to wait longer and let everyone process than to only allow half the class to understand it.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Behaviorism
It's hard in a theatre classroom to really implement the behaviorism theory, not that it's impossible though. The theatre I am observing this semester, Ms. Brugger, uses this theory in her film studies class. While most of the class is a lot of watching movies to understand the different types of film and such, she uses the Premack Principle to have the students work on the packets that she gives out on varying subjects (usually about the era they are studying) and then as a reward, the students get to pick out of a list of movies that fit with the lesson which one they want to watch in class. If the students are getting off topic or talking during their study time and their packets aren't getting completed, she implements the Response Cost and takes away their choice of working as a partnership on the packets, or simply chooses the movie they get to watch, rather than allow them to choose.
The students responded quite well to this particular example. It motivated students to get their packet done efficiently because they got to control how the class went as they did their work. They got to pick what they wanted to see and who they worked with and understood that failure to do that resulted in the loss of those privileges. There were some students who simply didn't care or tried, and Ms. Brugger took that into her judgement of these rewards and punishments. She work talk to those students to make sure they were both on the same page and she would try and find something that would motivate those students to do the work and not ruin the experience for the rest of the class. (I am not aware of any of those deals that she has made with those students, but they do seem to work harder for a different goal.)
I love this article because it talks about how giving students choices truly helps empower them and feel like they are getting the most out of their education. This works hand it hand with what Ms. Brugger is doing because she is giving the students the choice to pick the movie they enjoy. If they enjoy it, they are more likely to watch it and get more out of it. If they end up not liking the movie, they learned more about what they don't like in movie choices because they picked it! Giving students choice is the best learning strategy and behaviorism plays a role in that choice.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
Erikson/Marcia
Erik Erikson believed that everyone goes through a psychosoical crises, and that we go through several several times over again throughout our life. Below is a picture of those different levels and the approximate age for each of those. These ages do not define and solely claim that level, but that is typically the age we first experience it and when it is the strongest seen.
According to the chart, in high school, students would be facing the Identity v Role Confusion. I would agree with this, but I think there is more to that. Students when they first are in your class will deal with the trust v mistrust level. Can they come to you and trust that you will help them? That you know what you are teaching? They deal with intimacy v isolation. While it may not be on a marriage level, it can easily correlate with group work v individual assignment. Are we as educators giving students the chance to work through group assignments, helping them develop that skill or are we keeping them to work by themselves and learning not to be open to others ideas?
I know that the teacher I am observing this semester is constantly putting students in groups to work together. And not all of it is necessarily group work, but she is allowing the students to learn to work with different type of people and allowing them to communicate their thoughts so that they are more proficient in communicating. I definitely want to be able to do that in my classroom and allow students to learn to express themselves in a group setting and how to appropriately do that.
I honestly think that you could eliminate the "approximate age" on the picture above and change it to "time in the classroom". The beginning, first day, of class and different levels throughout until the last day of class. Students will most likely experience some of all of these crisis'.
Now if we look at James Marcia's work, we can see a type of "commitment level" that students can experience in finding themselves. Students will fluctuate through all of these, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement. I think that more or less students will be somewhere between foreclosure and moratorium, or in other words, they are committed to an idea of themselves but haven't tried to explore it to they are actively exploring different options of themselves and what they like.
The following link will take you to an online book title Drama and Theatre with Children: International Perspectives. This book is really cool because it talks about how children find themselves and what they perceive in this world and there is even a section about Erikson's theory and how we as theatre educators should not try and force a student to have an identity crisis to achieve a level of understanding, but that students should find a sense of themselves in order to portray any type of role. It's a great read if you have the time!
I know that the teacher I am observing this semester is constantly putting students in groups to work together. And not all of it is necessarily group work, but she is allowing the students to learn to work with different type of people and allowing them to communicate their thoughts so that they are more proficient in communicating. I definitely want to be able to do that in my classroom and allow students to learn to express themselves in a group setting and how to appropriately do that.
I honestly think that you could eliminate the "approximate age" on the picture above and change it to "time in the classroom". The beginning, first day, of class and different levels throughout until the last day of class. Students will most likely experience some of all of these crisis'.
Now if we look at James Marcia's work, we can see a type of "commitment level" that students can experience in finding themselves. Students will fluctuate through all of these, diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and achievement. I think that more or less students will be somewhere between foreclosure and moratorium, or in other words, they are committed to an idea of themselves but haven't tried to explore it to they are actively exploring different options of themselves and what they like.
The following link will take you to an online book title Drama and Theatre with Children: International Perspectives. This book is really cool because it talks about how children find themselves and what they perceive in this world and there is even a section about Erikson's theory and how we as theatre educators should not try and force a student to have an identity crisis to achieve a level of understanding, but that students should find a sense of themselves in order to portray any type of role. It's a great read if you have the time!
Physical Development/Bronfenbrenner
High school is a challenging time for any student. They have expectations to meet, friends to impress, their bodies are still changing from puberty. It's a lot to take it! Take into account that we as teachers are trying to add to their development and make them smarter and more educated students and you have a lot to think about for a student. But I want to address in this post how their physical development affects their learning in the classroom.
Now, obviously, students in high school are still going through a stage of puberty. Boys voices are still changing, body hair growing, big appetites, sexual urges. Girls are dealing with periods, appetites, sexual urges, leveling off on their height. That is a lot of change happening to them on a daily basis. They are confused and very self-cautious. Now we as educators can help students feel safe about their bodies in our classroom by helping provide physical activities throughout the lesson to help them be comfortable with their body and using it in multiple ways.
Educators need to be aware of the different influences affecting a student as well. Their family, their religious beliefs, friends, ect. Lets look at religious first. If you look at Utah, the predominant religion is Mormonism, but not everyone follows that religion. So we need to make sure our lessons are not geared toward everyone understanding a reference to a particular religion because not everyone will understand it, even if they grew up around that religion! Parents will have expectations of their kids as well that we need to be cautious of. If parents are expecting their kid to get an "A" in a class, helping provide the material and resources for the student to be successful to get that "A" is something that we can do. Here is link that you can read that helps give some important information that teachers and parents can do to help work together to benefit the students learning.
Now, obviously, students in high school are still going through a stage of puberty. Boys voices are still changing, body hair growing, big appetites, sexual urges. Girls are dealing with periods, appetites, sexual urges, leveling off on their height. That is a lot of change happening to them on a daily basis. They are confused and very self-cautious. Now we as educators can help students feel safe about their bodies in our classroom by helping provide physical activities throughout the lesson to help them be comfortable with their body and using it in multiple ways.
Educators need to be aware of the different influences affecting a student as well. Their family, their religious beliefs, friends, ect. Lets look at religious first. If you look at Utah, the predominant religion is Mormonism, but not everyone follows that religion. So we need to make sure our lessons are not geared toward everyone understanding a reference to a particular religion because not everyone will understand it, even if they grew up around that religion! Parents will have expectations of their kids as well that we need to be cautious of. If parents are expecting their kid to get an "A" in a class, helping provide the material and resources for the student to be successful to get that "A" is something that we can do. Here is link that you can read that helps give some important information that teachers and parents can do to help work together to benefit the students learning.
Vygotsky
The cool thing about theatre is that we kind of always are incorporating Vygotsky and his theory. In the sense that in order for one to become a better performer, they need to practice of course, but they need to push themselves just outside their comfort zone, or in this case, the Zone of Proximal Development. The zone of proximal development, AKA the ZPD, is a range of tasks or objectives that one is ready to accomplish with help to get them to the next level of understanding. Actors work with each other and with a director to get to that next level, as do teachers.
Fellow actors, students, directors, teachers. All of these things could be known as people who are More Knowledgeable Others, or someone who has experience in a certain area of learning. They can help guide one to becoming a better performer. In high school, that typically will fall to the teacher, AKA me. We help students to get to that next level of understanding in performance.
In theatre, one subject is easily connected to another part of theatre. So internalization of material and knowledge is easily transferable between all of the theatre world. No matter where you go, you can understand theatre, even if you don't know the language. You can understand what they are wanting or what an actors objective is by understanding how facial expressions and body gestures work. How the tone in one's voice portrays emotions. We teach all of that in the classroom!
In this link, you will find a PDF that talks about the framework of theatre in school. On page 9, you can find on the side that theatre's work from one class to the next is scaffolded, giving the students the education they need succeed as they progress in theatre and learn more in depth techniques, continuing outside of high school and to the college level and beyond. We have scaffolding techniques for a specific unit but that unit in and of itself is its own scaffolding to understand the next unit. That's what I love about theatre, and why I can't wait to teach it in the classroom!
Teachers behavior in the classroom should be driven to help students understand that what they bring to the classroom (their background, their experiences, their life) can help them understand the relevance of the topic for the day. We as teachers need to be aware of our students backgrounds to an extent so that we can relate the material to them. Helping them to internalize that something that they learned at home can apply to the work at hand in class.
Fellow actors, students, directors, teachers. All of these things could be known as people who are More Knowledgeable Others, or someone who has experience in a certain area of learning. They can help guide one to becoming a better performer. In high school, that typically will fall to the teacher, AKA me. We help students to get to that next level of understanding in performance.
In theatre, one subject is easily connected to another part of theatre. So internalization of material and knowledge is easily transferable between all of the theatre world. No matter where you go, you can understand theatre, even if you don't know the language. You can understand what they are wanting or what an actors objective is by understanding how facial expressions and body gestures work. How the tone in one's voice portrays emotions. We teach all of that in the classroom!
In this link, you will find a PDF that talks about the framework of theatre in school. On page 9, you can find on the side that theatre's work from one class to the next is scaffolded, giving the students the education they need succeed as they progress in theatre and learn more in depth techniques, continuing outside of high school and to the college level and beyond. We have scaffolding techniques for a specific unit but that unit in and of itself is its own scaffolding to understand the next unit. That's what I love about theatre, and why I can't wait to teach it in the classroom!
Teachers behavior in the classroom should be driven to help students understand that what they bring to the classroom (their background, their experiences, their life) can help them understand the relevance of the topic for the day. We as teachers need to be aware of our students backgrounds to an extent so that we can relate the material to them. Helping them to internalize that something that they learned at home can apply to the work at hand in class.
Monday, February 27, 2017
Kohlberg
Kohlberg is a very interesting fellow. He lives along the same line of Piaget but with a slightly different approach, looking more at the moral development of a student. He breaks it down into three different levels, with two sub levels on each. The first being preconventional, or before rules. The two sub levels here are obedience vs punishment, good or bad action is determined by the physical consequence. The other is personal reward, what do I get out of the situation. The next stage is the conventional stage, AKA rules. The sub levels here are good boy/nice girl, good means 'nice'. The other is law and order, laws are absolute. The authority must be respected. The last stage is the postconventional, abstract rule breaking. The sub levels here are social contract, what is good according to the society it is associated with. A groups definition of good. The other is universal ethical principle, what is right and wrong is individually decided and thought in the abstract.
Here is a youtube video that you can check out to double check your understanding of Kohlberg's stages that I briefly went over.
With this background of Kohlberg, I now take a look at the students that I observe each week. I would say that most live in this preconventional-conventional stage. Some touch in the postconventional, but for the most part the students are staying in those beginning stages with their moral development. They are very concerned about what the results of a choice will do for them and there grade. Another group of students are concerned about meeting the rules of the class exactly, even if the situation deems it to be changed.
For example, one week I was observing my teacher's theatre 3 class learn about viewpoints. It was a hands on lesson and the students had to get up on the stage and move around to learn about the different viewpoints. Some of the students showed a conventional moral development. The teacher would tell the students that whenever they walked between two students, those students were a door that you had to move through in a fun and different way. Some of the students took it very literal and every single "door" that they past through they jumped or dove or did something big and different because those were the rules and they needed to be met (law and order). Other students however would only go through the motions. Slightly raising an arm or not even doing anything but walk around the room. The lacked to see any reward from this because there was no punishment for not doing the task.
Now with this type of activity, it is hard to be watching every student the entire time to make sure they are doing what is being asked, so helping the students develop that moral reasoning as the teacher is a bit harder. However, rules could have been laid that allows the students to help motivate each other to participate, since they are all walking around each other. But that can be tough because you don't want the students to be distracted looking for those not participating rather than fully engaging themselves.
Here is a youtube video that you can check out to double check your understanding of Kohlberg's stages that I briefly went over.
With this background of Kohlberg, I now take a look at the students that I observe each week. I would say that most live in this preconventional-conventional stage. Some touch in the postconventional, but for the most part the students are staying in those beginning stages with their moral development. They are very concerned about what the results of a choice will do for them and there grade. Another group of students are concerned about meeting the rules of the class exactly, even if the situation deems it to be changed.
For example, one week I was observing my teacher's theatre 3 class learn about viewpoints. It was a hands on lesson and the students had to get up on the stage and move around to learn about the different viewpoints. Some of the students showed a conventional moral development. The teacher would tell the students that whenever they walked between two students, those students were a door that you had to move through in a fun and different way. Some of the students took it very literal and every single "door" that they past through they jumped or dove or did something big and different because those were the rules and they needed to be met (law and order). Other students however would only go through the motions. Slightly raising an arm or not even doing anything but walk around the room. The lacked to see any reward from this because there was no punishment for not doing the task.
Now with this type of activity, it is hard to be watching every student the entire time to make sure they are doing what is being asked, so helping the students develop that moral reasoning as the teacher is a bit harder. However, rules could have been laid that allows the students to help motivate each other to participate, since they are all walking around each other. But that can be tough because you don't want the students to be distracted looking for those not participating rather than fully engaging themselves.
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