Constructivism in Practice

I think that forming and testing hypotheses is a way that our students can become higher level thinkers, and that goes hand in hand with Constructivism. We have to being higher level thinkers to be able to form a hypothesis. To come up with an educated guess as to an outcome makes us think at a higher level. We have to think about possible outcomes, which make sense and which don't. After coming up with a hypothesis we have to be able to test it. During the testing process our students will generate data which will either prove or disprove their original hypothesis. While looking at the data our students have collected they have to be able extract which is good and bad data. There is a lot of higher level thinking going on during this whole process. Our students have to look at various solutions or reasons to a problem that is proposed by the class or the teacher. When we have our students involved with the decision making process our students become higher level thinkers which is constructivism in practice.

Cognitivism in Practice

I think that there are many instructional strategies that correlate with the principles of cognitive learning. Cognitive knowledge is having a working knowledge about a certain subject not just memorizing facts. When it comes to cues, questions, and advance organizers the student must have and continue to have a working knowledge about that subject. I think that using cues and questions can help to facilitate that learning which will lead to have knowledge on the topic. Along with cue and questions students can also help to build that know by summarizing and note taking. Students must be able to add and subtract information in order to summarize a topic. When students do this they are working at a high cognitive level than just repeating what a teacher or book might have said. Have students be able to know what is important information and which information is secondary has those students working at a high level. The same goes for Note Taking. In the book "Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works" the author says that just repeating or writing note verbatim does not mean that the student truly knows the information. We as teachers want our students to be able to know and use the information we give them. To have cognitive knowledge about a subject students have to be able to think at a higher level.

Behaviorist Learning Theory

When it comes to behaviorist learning theory and reinforcing effort I can see a direct correlation between the two. As teachers we tend to praise behaviors that are positive in our classroom and punish behaviors that are negative. This find right in with what Skinner say about Operant conditioning and behaviorist learning theory. Although there are many different ways for our students to become and stay motivated, reward for good behavior and punishment for bad seem to be the most common and easiest way to reinforce effort.
Homework and Practice also fit into the BLT. They say the repetition is the mother of all learning. Doing homework and practicing something over and over will help students to better learn about a certain content area. Having students practice over and over will help students to learn about a subject matter but I don't think that it helps with higher order thinking.