Learning is constant process that pools together environmental, cognitive as well as emotional influences including experiences of attaining, boosting, or modifying ones understanding,skills,ideals as well as the world views. Therefore, learning as a procedure focuses on what occurs when the learning is taking place.
From the behaviorist prospective, all processes relate to learning – thinking, acting, and feeling – are presented as a set of behaviors. Therefore, behaviorism defined learning as a method to teach children any type of activities by means of drilling and practicing. Using behaviorist model of teaching and outlining lessons involves a response paradigm to be followed both by a teacher and by a student.
In other words, the main task of the teach consists in clear exposition of lesson objectives that would help students understand what needs to be done and help teacher track the changes and the course of accomplishing those objectives. On the one hand, such an approach seems to be effective because teacher can follow the lesson plan directly and expect the behaviors with regard to the identified objectives.
On the other hand, these behaviors may end up causing the concerned child to lack stable interaction with others. Certainly, dealing with behaviors is a great challenge as far as culturally diverse group of students is concerned. Teacher should find an approach that would be consonant with a plethora of nuances linked to the problem of learning levels and cultural peculiarities.
The teacher should establish contact with all students to understand the gap that should be fulfilled. This is, perhaps, the major constraint faced by educators while resorting to behaviorist theories.
Theory Application
In the video, the teacher strictly establishes the traditional curriculum and the steps to be taken to accomplish the plan effectively. In particular, he describes in detail the essence of the reading activities and tries to identify the importance of reading.
He clearly outlines what students will have to accomplish during their summer vocations and explains the steps in practice. First of all, he highlights the three steps to be done for successful reading. These steps include reading a paragraph from a non-fiction article, retelling the passage that has just been read, and rereading the paragraph one again if the information is difficult to perceive while reading for the first time (“E.L. Hayes – The 5th Grade, DC,” n. d.).
When the teacher described the steps, he proceeds to practicing and drilling the outlined activities in order to track the way students understand those steps. Secondly, apart from clear instructions and careful lesson planning, a behaviorist approach also implies the evaluation of students’ response to the presented plan.
This can be explicitly viewed on the video where the teacher details the steps into more meaningful sub-units to understand what problems might occur as students read an article and analyze it. In other words, a behavioral model does not just set the rules making a student to observe them.
Rather, it is a mutual agreement between a teacher and a student where the former establishes specific behaviors to receive positive reinforcement. Hence, before students start accomplishing the assignment, the teacher gives an explicit example of how the reading process should be organized.
He reads the article, starts retelling the paragraph, identifies the problems he has with understanding the passages, and reads the text ones again to find an answer the question (“E.L. Hayes – The 5th Grade, DC,” n. d. ). In such a way, the teacher intends to promote intrinsic reinforcement (Ormrod, 2011, p. 417).
With regard to the approaches used by the teacher, it should be stressed that some of the methods applied align to the established patterns and modes of behaviorism. Most of the presented stages are oriented on introducing new thinking and acting behavior that were first shown by the teacher.
Specifically, the first strategy used by the teacher align with the concepts of traditional planning of the curriculum where the primary goal is to identify objectives and explain students what they are expected to do (Ormrod, 2011, p. 386). This is particularly connected with operant conditioning, meaning that the teacher modifies his behavior to associate with the incentive.
Second, scaffolding the delivered material is aimed at reinforcing the students’ responsiveness and triggering their reactions to the identified steps. This stage of teaching is congruent with behaviorism as well because it aims to provoke student attention and trigger them to perform the previously identified and shown behaviors.
On the whole, the video content offers a candid insight into the manner a lesson plan can be effectively executed. In regard to the dynamics of direct instructions the content can be equally be presented differently by including continuous probing which embraces the aspects of testing as well as assessing the student using suitable corrective responses.
Therefore, the content can be re-taught through engaging the students in more complex issues gradually. Thus, this would entail establishing that; the objectives are clear, time allocated is adequate, the content examined is broad, the teacher controls and balances the usage of instructional materials, and that the questions fielded are at a less cognitive level which would provide countless positive responses.
Lesson Redesign
The above-outlined strategies refer to the concept that teaching ought to be presented in organized learning. Specifically, the teacher makes use of operant conditioning and intrinsic reinforcement of students’ behavior. In this respect, the content of the proposed lesson plan will also be based on this approaches that contribute to better identification of goals and recognition of stimulus to learn and practice a specific activity (Ormrod, 2011).
The purpose of this can be attributed to the scope of aiding the students to learn how to illustrate the mastery of the presented subject before embarking on the other subject. Therefore, if students fail to understand or comprehend the presented subject, under this strategy the proposed strategies will help understand how the lessons plan can be improved in terms of peer monitoring, unit group discussions, tutoring including additional homework.
This would thus entail providing extra time to those students who require extra coaching. After re-planning the lessons, it will be possible to provide with unit’s materials which are designed for group or individual use. It ought to be noted that mastery approach in regard to behavioral strategies allows the students to be given the apposite circumstances for learning.
Thus, each student is expected to apply to the behaviors that were initially shown by the teacher. Assessing the students would entail gauging the manner they react to the specific questions as well as the materials assigned to them.
This can be linked to the fact that the mastery strategy provides the students with an opportunity to learn and interact through collective tutoring. Therefore, in such a situation evaluating each student would be easier and more moderated.
Conclusion
By re-teaching, the video content as per the above mentioned behavioral strategies the apparent aspects that are linked to behavioral theory. This can be testified by the manner these strategies have been executed to integrate diverse behavioral features. I
t should be noted that in the course of lesson planning as well as operant condition and reinforcement teaching strategies seem to be a crucial tool for advancing the thinking skills for students. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it allows the teacher-student relationship to develop.
Therefore, examining the diverse behavioral concepts and assumptions, it would be instrumental to argue that the video provides a considerable insight into diverse Elaborations theory and Instructional transaction theories essential in lesson planning including class planning. This can be supported by the fact that each strategy provides diverse aspects of course modularity, which includes definitions and objectives of all modules.
Also, the explored strategies illustrate that individual learning speed or tempo is essential and ought to be considered when planning for a lesson. Therefore, the teacher is expected to be patient and considerate when executing his lesson plans in regard to the above mentioned strategies.
It should be noted each student has his or her unique requirement and behavioral attitudes which require careful approach and considerations. Therefore, all these ought to be considered as is illustrated in the video “E.L. Haynes – The 5th Grade, DC” to understand how behaviors are associated with learning techniques and knowledge acquisition.
References
E.L. Haynes – The 5th Grade, DC. (n.d.) Web.
Ormrod, J. E. (2011). Educational Psychology. (7th Ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.