Rebecca Andary Masters of Teaching (Primary)

Student ID: 100062238 EDUC5160

Introduction

A teacher must plan lessons that engage each student (Groundwater-Smith, Ewing & Le Cornu
2015, p. 89) and “encourage learners to find personal meaning in their new learning” (Jensen
2008, p. 134). I believe that researching and considering different educational theories can assist
teachers in identifying how to engage and empower their students to make meaningful connections
with the content within their lesson plans. As an example of this I have chosen Information
Processing Theory and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory to analyse a Year 6 English lesson plan
and identify how key concepts within these theories have been applied to engage students and
help them learn the intended content.

Information Processing Theory looks at the mental processing that takes place when we learn
something new. Two key concepts of this theory are that of attention and elaboration. Information
Processing theory states that it is critical that learners are paying attention and actively engaged
in the learning activity for learning to occur (Huitt 2003). The theory also states that elaboration,
adding meaning to new information by connecting it to existing knowledge, improves learning
(Woolfolk & Margetts 2016, p. 263). I will analyse the lesson plan to identify how the teacher has
planned an inclusive lesson that gains the attention of students and incorporates elaboration
strategies in a way that caters for the diversity of students.

Lev Vygotsky believed that children learn through social interactions. I have chosen to closely
examine two aspects of Vygotsky’s theory, cultural tools and the zone of proximal
development. Vygotsky believed that each culture had a set of tools that it passed on from adults
to children (Duchesne et al. 2015, p. 85). Cultural tools include language, numerical systems, art,
writing, diagrams, signs, technology and so on. For Vygotsky, language was the more important
cultural tool. The zone of proximal development, Vygotsky identified, as the “distance between
what children can do by themselves and what they can do with the help of others” (Duchesne et al.
2015, p. 87).

Analysis 1 - Information Processing Theory

In Information Processing theory students receive information through their five senses into
sensory memory before some information passes through to working memory. In working memory
the brain will process the information, align or connect it to pre-existing knowledge in long-term
memory and from there connected information moves to long-term memory. The process is
cyclical with information moving back into working memory when recalled and our pre-existing
knowledge from long-term memory also influencing our perception of new information received in
sensory memory (Woolfolk & Margetts 2016, p. 251). Attention plays a key role in each phase of
Rebecca Andary Masters of Teaching (Primary)
Student ID: 100062238 EDUC5160

this process. Attention itself is the process of selecting what we attend to, what we ignore, what
we focus on and how long we focus for and “is the first step in the learning process” (Thorne &
Thomas 2012). In the classroom, by year 6, most students will have developed the ability to self-
regulate their attention and pay attention to the teacher and the task at hand for a sustained period
of time (Duchesne et al. 2015, p. 96). Therefore, when analysing this lesson plan for attention
strategies the focus is on strategies that engage and direct student attention to a task, focal point,
way of thinking, rather than on strategies that maintain student attention.

Throughout this lesson plan the teacher establishes opportunities to gain student attention.
Providing short and clear instructions is a technique for directing attention (Whitington 2017) as it
makes it explicit to students what they need to attend to (Duchesne et al. 2015, p. 102). In this
lesson plan the teacher provides short and clear instructions for each activity.

Tapping into interests is another way to gain and maintain attention. Interests can be either
personal or situational – short-lived specific to the task or activity “that catch and keep the
student’s attention” (Woolfolks & Margetts 2016, p. 375). Along a similar vein, planning lessons
that include variety also helps to keep students engaged (Ormrod 2011, p.187; Wilson & Conyers
2015). It is my belief that the teacher tries to spark interest with the variety of activities and
instructional methods in the lesson plan. While not all activities and methods may interest all
students, there is variety between them from listening and doing, from whole-group to small-group
and individual work, from food, to super heroes, to craft activities and music. In particular, the
activity which asks students to find similes and metaphors in contemporary songs and to describe
what they mean allows students to identify songs that particularly appeal to them.

However, what could be a hindering factor for this lesson plan is that it commences with the
teacher reading aloud a lengthy excerpt from a book to introduce and preface the lesson. The
excerpt, while descriptive isn’t likely to spark interest. As an alternative introduction, the lesson
plan could commence with the popcorn experience - making popcorn and having children use their
five senses to describe the experience as a way to catch student attention. Alternatively, the
activity which asks students to find similes and metaphors in contemporary songs and to describe
what they mean would have been an engaging introductory activity as it not only sparks interest
but also taps into student’s prior knowledge of music and songs which helps to direct attention
(Duchesne et al. 2015 p. 196). From there the lesson could lead onto the Poetry and Pleasure
reading from Colin Thiele’s compilation book - “Looking at Poetry”.

Another concern with the lesson is that it is not made explicitly clear within the lesson plan how the
teacher intends to inform students of the purpose of the lesson. An assumption could be made
Rebecca Andary Masters of Teaching (Primary)
Student ID: 100062238 EDUC5160

that the students have already been introduced to adjectives and verbs but if not, this is a flaw in
the lesson plan. Making sure the purpose of the lesson is clear to students is a helpful and
developmentally appropriate attention strategy (Woolfolk & Margetts 2016, p. 254) as it directs
student’s attention to the right focal point of the learning activity (Duchesne et al. 2015, p. 196).

Elaboration strategies provide opportunities for students to connect new ideas and concepts to
what they already know, their beliefs, experiences, attitudes, and values. This in turn helps to
build a deeper understanding of the knowledge (Ormrod 2011, p. 193; Woolfolk & Margetts 2015,
p. 263) and provide a reason for the new information to be remembered (Weinstein et al. 1988, p.
18). Elaboration is also one of many metacognitive skills that students acquire. Metacognitive
skills are those that students intentionally use to direct their thinking or learning. For example, by
year 6, students will have started to develop a sense of their preferred learning style, the ability to
self-regulate their attention and elaboration strategies that work for them (Blake & Pope 2008, p.
66). In recognition of this, teachers should be utilising a variety of elaboration strategies within
their lesson plans and allowing students an opportunity to further develop their understanding of
what strategies work best for them.

This lesson plan incorporates elaboration strategies, encouraging students to connect new poetry
techniques incorporated within the lesson with what they already know about words, food, colours,
and music. An excellent example of this is the activity where the teacher plays a couple of
YouTube videos that provide examples of similes and metaphors used in popular movies and
songs. At least one of the songs or movies is likely to be familiar to each student, and even if one
isn’t it may have students focusing on similes and metaphors next time they listen to a song or
watch their favourite movie. What this activity does well is link a new concept to a familiar
memory – the movie or the song. It also provides a context and purpose for similes and
metaphors providing further connections and reason for the new information to be remembered.

One concern with the lesson plan is the missed opportunity to incorporate poetry across different
languages and cultures. With so much diversity within most classrooms, this lesson plan could
have included an activity to explore poems in other languages and cultures and identify common
elements. For example, are white space, repetition, onomatopoeia found universally in poetry?
This additional activity would have ensured that students from non-english speaking or anglo-
saxon backgrounds had equal opportunity to make meaningful connections with the concepts
covered in the lesson plan.

Analysis 2 - Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Rebecca Andary Masters of Teaching (Primary)
Student ID: 100062238 EDUC5160

As stated previously, Vygotsky’s theory focuses on the influence a child’s social and cultural
environment has on their cognitive development. A central idea of his theory is that every culture
passes along a set of cognitive or cultural tools and these tools help the child to learn about the
world around them. As previously stated cultural tools include language, numerical systems, art,
writing, diagrams, signs, technology and so on with the most prominent of all tools being language
(Ormrod 2011, p. 40; Winsler 2003, p. 257; Woolfolk & Margetts 2016, p. 96). Students aren’t just
exposed to these tools in school but there are some, like language, that should be taught in the
classroom, both explicitly and subversively. In the early years, the teachers and parents model
language skills which help children to communicate. As children get older, and certainly by year 6,
language begins to serve as an “intellectual function, as a tool for problem solving and self-
regulation” (Duchesne et al. 2013, p. 85).

This lesson plan provides opportunities for the teacher to teach language tools to students and
opportunities for students to practice these and develop their own understandings. In the
onomatopoeia activity the teacher leads a brainstorming exercise asking students to describe the
experience of making popcorn using their five senses. For this the teacher models listening by
giving examples of what they hear, see, feel, smell, taste. The teacher then uses the descriptive
words to write their own poem. In this example the teacher is modelling using their ears to listen
and words to describe what they are hearing. They model a process for writing a poem but also
they model the power of poetry to evoke emotion - in this lesson plan it’s laughter.

Additional cultural tools explored in the lesson plan are art, music and the use of computers. There
is an activity in the lesson plan that involves creating a piece of artwork using different colours and
patterns and then describing feelings for each colour. The lesson plan states that the aim is to
choose about 5 words and to group them together so that they make sense. This activity models
art and language as cultural tools. There is also an activity that uses a website containing a poetic
phrase random generator that students can use if that is their preferred approach. This activity
introduces computers as a cultural tool. The last activity involves listening to contemporary songs
and the use of YouTube videos to investigate and explore the use of simile and metaphor. This
activity is again using computers as a cultural tool but also music and language.

There are several ways in which cultural tools are passed on to students in the classroom but two
are demonstrated in this lesson plan. The first and most prominently utilised in the lesson plan is
instructed learning where the teacher instructs the students and the students use these
instructions to self-regulate (Woolfolk & Margetts 2016, p. 97). The second is collaborative
learning where a group of students works together to understand the task and each other and
through that process, learning occurs (Woolfolk & Margetts 2016, p. 97).
Rebecca Andary Masters of Teaching (Primary)
Student ID: 100062238 EDUC5160

Perhaps the most well known of Vygotsky’s ideas is the zone of proximal development. Vygotsky
identified that learning takes place in the space between what students already know and what
they can do with assistance from a more capable other, such as a parent, teacher or more capable
peer. Therefore, according to Vygotsky, in the classroom it is the role of the teacher to structure a
lesson plan that provides students with opportunities to further develop their understanding
(Duchesne et al. 2013, p. 87). In support of this belief, the teacher should be “explaining,
modeling, and using guided practice in the classroom” (Blake & Pope 2008). This practice of
supporting students through the learning process is often referred to as scaffolding. Within this
lesson plan, the teacher scaffolds the students learning by walking them through examples of
onomatopoeia, similes and metaphors. These are language and sound devices that students
would have been introduced to in year 3 and 5 respectively if they have been following the
Australian Curriculum (The Australian Curriculum 2016). After reintroducing the students to
onomatopoeia, the teacher goes on to introduce repetition and the use of white space in poems.
Lastly the teacher models putting these elements together to create a poem. As the activity
progresses the teacher is scaffolding students by giving them the foundations they need for the for
the next stage in the activity which is to experiment with these language and sound devices as well
as the use of white space to write their own poems. This activity allows students to work within
their zone of proximal development. Some students may experiment with all three elements of
poetry while others may not be ready for that yet and experimenting with only one or two elements
of poetry will be challenging enough.

Similarly, in an earlier activity within the lesson plan the teacher has incorporated the optional use
of technology for students who prefer that approach. Students can either review poems and select
their favourite phrases to use in a poem or they can use a website to generate phrases for them.
They can opt to use two or three phrases. This approach demonstrates an understanding of the
zone of proximal development and in particular that the differences in what students can do by
themselves and with the support of the teacher will differ based on each student’s zone of proximal
development (Duchesne et al. 2013, p. 87).

As well as the teacher, peers can assist each other in developing their understanding of new
concepts within their zone of proximal development. “Sometimes the best teacher is another
student who has just worked out how to solve the problem, because this student is probably more
in tune with the learners zone of proximal development” (Woolfolk & Margetts 2016, p. 99). In the
lesson plan there is a group activity that has students working together to cut out phrases from
magazines and arrange those in different ways to create poems. If possible, it would be
advantageous for the teacher to have students work with another student who has a better grasp
Rebecca Andary Masters of Teaching (Primary)
Student ID: 100062238 EDUC5160

of poetry as this group work dynamic and the dialogue it involves can be beneficial to both
students (Woolfolk & Margetts 2016, p. 99).

Conclusion

This lesson plan focusses highly on practical activities, engaging the students and directing their
attention to identifying elements of poetry; adjectives, similes and metaphors, and repetition in the
world around them. It also encourages the students to utilise the elements of poetry in writing their
own poems. It acknowledges that by year 6 students are able to self-regulate and sustain
attention for extended periods of time. It provides opportunities for most students to practice
elaboration strategies and develop meaningful connections with the lesson content. This lesson
plan demonstrates an understanding of the zone of proximal development and scaffolds students
through a range of activities.

The essential concern arising from the analysis is that it is not culturally diverse. Though the plan
includes a number of activities, presumably spread out over multiple lessons, it doesn’t explore
poetry in other languages nor ask students to share poems either from their own culture or simply
those resonate with them. Drawing from the concepts within Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and
the Information Processing approach, I believe teaching is about assisting students in creating
meaningful connection, and making sense of the world around them. I believe that in order to fulfill
this role, a student’s diverse background needs to be considered and incorporated into each
lesson plan, particularly a plan that extends over multiple lessons.

Word Count: 2684

References

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Rebecca Andary Masters of Teaching (Primary)
Student ID: 100062238 EDUC5160

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