Kaelin – Page 2 – Academic Creativity and Excellence Day

Cassidy Galindo, Taylor Irons

Incentives in the Classroom

Our project is about incentives in the classroom. The research question that we chose to focus on is, “Do classroom incentive programs really benefit student performance?” Teachers design incentives to provide students with clear feedback on appropriate classroom behavior, and a path to progress towards mastery of the curriculum. Teachers have the choice to design their own incentives and to choose which system fits best in their classroom. In order for incentives to truly work it must be followed consistently and needs to maintain student interest. The concept of incentives is to provide rewards at a variety of levels and to link it with expectations. Incentives play a huge role with target behavior in the classroom as well. The pros to incentives is that it changes behavior quickly, it is easy for students to understand, and encourages involvement and participation. The cons of incentives are, it is only temporary, it can be expensive, some students might give up, and it can lose value. There have been several studies done within incentives in the classroom for all grade levels. Researchers have found that incentives can boost student performance. Incentives has the ability to make students take tests and to take classwork more seriously. Researchers also found that elementary students are more responsive to incentives than high school students. Overall incentives can benefit and improve student performance throughout the classroom.

EDUC 330, Child Development

Brian Kaelin

Banquet Room, Poster #4

10 AM – Noon

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Amanda Goodwin, Mary Lou Greene

Outdoor Learning

Children learn in various settings and formats. The most beneficial setting in terms of development is the wide world outside the classroom. A wide world equals a wide perspective. Studies have shown that students thrive in their physical, cognitive, and psychological domains while learning in an outside environment. There is an infinite amount of project-based learning opportunities that any teacher can implement in their curriculum. Outdoor curriculum includes natural materials, big questions, promotes community, discovery, and observation skills that encompass common core state standards in an effective manner. Students are happier, have higher self-esteem, build healthy relationships, master social and emotional skills, are set up for a healthy life style, have stronger language, and develop interests in all subject matter when lessons are kicked outside of the classroom!

EDUC 330, Child Development

Brian Kaelin

Banquet Room, Poster #5

10 AM – Noon

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Britnee Joaquin

How Teachers Can Promote Students’ Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy, or the belief in one’s ability to achieve a goal or outcome, is a major influence of a student’s academic achievement, motivation, and learning. Students with a strong sense of self-efficacy are more likely to challenge themselves, be intrinsically motivated, persevere through failure, and achieve their goals. Teachers can help support and increase student self-efficacy by incorporating specific strategies into the classroom. First, mastery experiences are the best way to promote student self-efficacy because the student experienced success in that specific area. Second, self-efficacy can grow through vicarious experiences, which is when a student observes a peer or role model succeeding at something. Third, verbal persuasion and encouragement from the teacher or a peer is an effective strategy to promote self-efficacy. Fourth, a student’s emotional state or feelings towards a particular task or subject is strongly tied to one’s self-efficacy. Teachers can work on creating positive experiences and feelings towards that task or subject to boost one’s belief in their abilities. Other ways teachers can promote students’ self-efficacy are to teach goal setting, allow for cooperative learning, give students choices, and provide honest feedback.

EDUC 330, Child Development

Brian Kaelin

Banquet Room, Poster #6

10 AM – Noon

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Myranda Johnson, Bri Wood

Metacognition in an Elementary Classroom

This presentation serves to answer the research question of, “What strategies can be used to teach metacognition in an elementary classroom?” and addresses the research behind why such strategies are important to student learning. The methods used for this study were examination of a study on Educational Research for school learning conducted Wang, Haertal, and Walberg (1993) and more recent studies from 2007 by Pianta, Belsky, Houts, & Morrison, examining “opportunities to learn” in America’s public schools. The findings of this project demonstrated that metacognition is one of the most common characteristics of high achievers and that teachers typically spend 1/10 of the time on explicitly teaching metacognition to upper elementary students than they do content-specific information. In this presentation, 3 strategies were provided to answer the research question of how to promote metacognitive learning in elementary classrooms: Checklists, Think-Alouds, and “Turn-in boxes”. Of these strategies, Checklists teach students goal-setting and expectations, Think Alouds allow students to monitor their own learning while doing activities, and separate “Turn-in boxes” allow students to evaluate their achievement in deciding how well they did in each assignment. Overall, the purpose of this presentation serves to provide practical strategies for elementary teachers to use to develop metacognitive skills early on in students’ educations. The limitations of this study were that the presenters did not have the opportunity to test each of these strategies in their own classrooms.

EDUC 330, Child Development

Brian Kaelin

Banquet Room, Poster #7

10 AM – Noon

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Savanna Lassen, Danielle Willyard

Metacognition

Metacognition is the process in which we plan, monitor, and assess one’s own understanding, it required critical awareness of one’s thinking and learning, as well as how we think and learn best. There are many ways to help improve metacognition in the classroom. You can use planning strategies that include K-W-L charts, Think-Pair-Shares, and Jumpstart Journals. To monitor the learning of students, have students actively engage with strategies like Re-teach It and Fish Bowl discussions. The key to metacognition is assessing your own learning, strategies to help improve this important skill include Letters to Future Students, Figurative Transformation, and Photo Captions.

EDUC 330, Child Development

Brian Kaelin

Banquet Room

10 AM – Noon

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Commit Yourself to Long Term Memory

This presentation aims to answer the research question, what are long term memory strategies? I used research from multiple sources to provide information about long term memory. The beginning of my presentation outlines what the executive control process and how information passes into long term memory. The presentation will explain different ways to commit information into long term memory, such as using chunking, simple rehearsal and metacognition. This can be applied in a college classroom as well as my future classroom. My presentation will provide strategies for each.

EDUC 330 Child Development

Brian Kaelin

Banquet Room, Poster #3

1:00 – 3:00 PM

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