Chapter 2 - Cognitive/Linguistic Development

What?

This chapter contained a lot of information on how the brain works and how we organize what we learn. It also talked about Piaget's stages of development and Vygotsky's principles of ZPD and scaffolding.

So What?

This is so important to us as teachers because we need to understand students previous schemes and be able to teach in a way that they can effectively accommodate or assimilate the information that we teach. This also gives us a basic understanding of how the brain works and will help us to understand cognitive disabilities.


Now What?

Now that i know this information i actually have to use it. I will definitely remember the principle of ZPD and Scaffolding because in my field experience i was able to see what a huge difference that it can make. A lot of the students were not working in their ZPD and there was not proper scaffolding in many of the activities. This was a major problem because the students didn't learn anything. They just floundered and goofed off because they weren't being challenged correctly and they didn't understand what they needed to do.

We also learned about Piaget's stages and this will be important to me now because the students that i hope to teach will just be able to see other points of views and will be able to hypothesize using variable. These are just a few of the things in Piaget's stages, but knowing all of these items can really affect the way that i design my instruction and will help me to design instruction that will be approprate for the level that my students are at.