Amanda Copley
Ett4: Educational Presentation and Follow-Up
Task 6- Making Connections
April 19,2015

As a future teacher in the making, I am learning about the many key concepts to consider when planning on how approaching my first year of teaching content to elementary school students. Personally, I have less experience being a student in a public school classroom due to being homeschooled for the first three years of my “school years”. My mother was a wonderful teacher and very patient and informative to my brother and I; however, it wasn’t until I attended public school that I actually realized how much she influenced my current learning. I was able to make connections between many aspects about learning due to my mom being able to spend more time teaching and explaining to just my brother and I. I feel that my mother’s one on one time really helped me educationally; however, it was very hard to adjust to a teacher with a higher than one on one ratio. I feel that if that teacher would have taken the time to fully understand my prior experiences that I would have exceled more than I did. Although my schooling experience is out of the norm, I am very excited to be one of the key links in my future children’s learning experience that helps them tie all the content they learn throughout school. Knowing what I know now, examples of things that impact a child’s ability to process content are their previous experiences, stressors that were created in prior years associated with learning, and how the children mentally process information. An easy way to look at the importance of prior knowledge in the classroom is that it is the foundation in which I will help them build up their house by learning new information. Without prior knowledge learning cannot occur. Everyone recalls on memory and past experiences when facing new challenges and it is very important facet in the classroom. Teachers need to consider the past experiences as well as the interests of the class in order to make lessons more alluring and stimulating. Student’s interests are very important when I plan on making my lessons in order for the class to have the best possible results in everything that is being learned. I plan to use a lot of active learning within my classroom and to keep the children engaged by asking questions and accepting suggestions in how to learn the next lesson will all be ways to help my students be successful while staying interested. As a future teacher I will need to understand two concepts “one, as a future teacher we have to pay attention to any of the information that we have before us so that it can be processed, retained, and filed away for further use. The second feature is that it takes time to take the information that has been stored away and bring it to front for use later” (Slavin, 2009). When it comes to brain based learning, there are six key concepts that play a key role in having success. First is the importance of meaningful learning, all learning is meaningful but within the classroom it is said that “meaningful learning requires active involvement of the learner who has prior experiences and knowledge to bring understanding as new information is incorporated into memory” (Slavin, 2009). The definition of meaningful learning is “mental processing of new information that relates to previously learned knowledge” (Griffin, 2010). For example, within my future classroom I will be teaching many ideas and concepts; however, it is how I go about this to ensure that my children establish meaningful learning to make sure I am a success as a future teacher. When it comes to fractions, I feel that any sane young or old would run in fear. However, I feel that this is a prodigious idea of meaningful learning because you build up from notions you have already learned. Within early classes, children will learn how to write fractions and what each represents, as the grades progress, the children will begin to add,