Philosophy of Teaching

How I Believe Students Learn Every child develops and learns differently and as teachers we need to be aware of every students needs in our class, which is why I am a supporter of Vygotsky and his social constructivism which believes that children learn and develop from doing; he believes

groups can construct knowledge form one another, collaboratively share artifacts with shared meanings and connect with one another while being interactive. I think that
children need a lot of freedom to explore in the classroom so that they can use their own strategies and experience to make connections and grasp the concepts being taught, but I also believe that in order to make these connections Piagets beliefs that children develop in stages through individual constructivism goes hand in hand with social constructivism and collaborative learning. The first stage of Piagets theory is sensorimotor which is focusing on children birth to two years old. Children in this stage learn by their senses and actions. I believe a childs senses is a huge part of development. I think that during this stage it is important for children to develop good fine and gross motor skills in order for them to be successful for the future, by interacting a lot with adults who model how to use their motor skills, which to me is a for of collaborative learning. The second stage, pre-operational, is from age two to seven. This is where the child is not yet thinking logically, but is close. Children start to use mental representations to understand the world and what is going on around them. Recognition is an important part

of development. In order to remember and build off of your experiences, children must be able to recognize objects and situations, which is where social constructivism plays an important role. I think it is important for teachers to help children with recognition and expose them to as much as possible so that they can open new windows of opportunity to explore and build off of what they already know. During these years I think children should be doing the most exploring and the most interacting with others to build their own schema and knowledge based off of collaborating with others. Concrete operational is the third stage, from age seven to eleven. This stage is where children use logical reasoning to answer all of their questions. Children can now recognize what is going on around them and can classify the objects as they wish, this is also were collaboration can be important and stressed a lot. When children are in a social situation they can interact and discuss what they are encountering and can get different views or new information from others just by socially interacting. The fourth and final stage of Piagets theory is formal operational. Children ages eleven to fifteen years old use scientific reasoning to answer their questions and view the world. This stage is an important stage for teachers to recognize, because as children get older they become curious and have a drive to learn so being social and sharing ideas and understandings with others helps children collaborate and come up with reasoning and can also open the to new and fun ideas which they themselves could not have come up with. How This Will Affect My Teaching I want to teach kindergarten, so believing that children learn best by social constructivism I will have many centers and many group project time where I will have

children learn and explore in groups or on their own if thats how they learn best. I think it is our job as teachers to try to accommodate to how every child learns and in order to do that I think letting the children guide themselves and work in groups to come up with a strategy most effective for them is the best way to run my classroom. I also that think besides being aware of how children develop and learn teachers also need to enforce positive group guidance while letting the children have as much freedom as possible. I think that some individual work is great, but at a younger age I think that development is strongly based off of social interactions and collaborative learning, so my classroom will be adventurous and fun while doing a lot of group activities. As a teacher I will try my best to have a least restrictive environment in my classroom, but at the same time my schedule will be structured and hopefully very effective for every child in the class. I think it is important for teachers to have control over their class, but at the same time I think it is important that children learn by doing and engaging with each other.