Cognitive processes response

a) What are the essential skills and/or learning outcomes you want your students to know and

be able to do that relate to cognitive learning?

Cognitive skills I want my students to have (elementary-level):

·         Relate information to what they already know

·         How to organize information in a way that makes sense

·         How to visualize something in a way that helps you remember it

·         Have a variety of mnemonic techniques available to use (songs, images, keywords)

These skills will help students make more meaningful connections to the material, increasing the likelihood that they will remember what they learn. The most important one, to me, is being able to make connections to what they already know. I have noticed that elementary students can sometimes very easily memorize something or perform a task without seeing the significance of it. It is important to me to activate their background knowledge on topics, not only to draw their interest, but to deepen their understanding of material. This comes to mind especially when thinking about reading. If students are prepped to make connections and think about a topic before approaching a text, they are more likely to understand it.  What I also think is crucial is teaching kids that all these things are skills that can be learned, not just an innate process. I think that would help increase their motivation and self-efficacy, especially if we tracked progress. I’m not sure a purely cognitive view is one I want to adopt, but there are a lot of practically useful things included in the approach.