High School Literature Lesson

SCARLET LETTER (Links to an external site.)

Click on the video link above. After watching the video, respond to the prompt below by the due date. You will also be responsible for participating in two threads other than your own by responding to the posts of two other participants.

Discussion Prompt: Identify elements of the cognitive approach to instruction illustrated in the lesson. Please address the philosophy and basic assumptions, as well as at least one aspect of the cognitive approach (i.e., information processing, metacognition, or learning strategies). Suggested length is a response approximately equivalent to 150-300 words.

Reply 1:

After watching this video, Sue Southam does a great job using cognitivism as she does a lot of question and answering when it comes to characters in the book. Her philosophy is that she has them visualize the characters and write down what they see or has them write down characteristics of each character in the book. She walks around and talks around assessing the students. She also asks them about context clues in the story. Using context clues helps the students understand how the character is acting or what he/she may look like so they are able to discuss what the character looks like in their minds. We can assume they have spoken in lengths about the characters so now she is using memory, thinking and reflecting in order for the students to get a visual of a certain character. Their learning is active, constructive and therefore will help the learning, thinking and remembering will get easier over time.

Reply 2 :

In this video, Sue made sure the class was engaged in the conversation and called on a random student to answer to make sure students were always in focus. She then did an excellent job of re-reading a section from the book that is important and went over that specific part with the class. She walks back and forth making sure the class is doing the assignment while making sure they understand it. I think it is very important that she walks around the classroom so students can feel more comfortable asking for help. Often times I believe students are less likely to ask for help if the teacher is just sitting at their desk not paying attention to the classroom. Afterward, she continues to keep the class discussion going with the students as a whole so they can all engage thoughts together. Her strategy throughout the video was having students listen and when they weren’t listening they were writing down their thoughts and ideas about the text. She had them reflect a ton on their readings and had them put the story into their own words as well.