https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plans/teaching-content/spread-love/
Many of the characteristics of the lesson plan chosen embody Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories of development. Similar to Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories, the lesson heavily emphasizes social interaction and collaboration between students. These social interactions will help students organize new schemas based on what they already knew about Valentine’s day to create a new schema from what they will learn about the holiday. The active engagement with students and the lesson material will help them store and retrieve information more easily through the information processing theory. The lesson plan also heavily emphasizes the importance of constructivist approaches in teaching and learning. Most characteristics of the history of Valentine’s lesson plan are consistent with these main aspects of learning and development.
The first activity in the lesson encourages students to construct their own ideas about where they think the shape of a heart comes from. The students will then be able to think by imagining possible reasons to the origin of the shape of the heart. A discussion of the topic before it is introduced is a great way to gauge what kinds of ideas the students may have before informing them. This activity is also a great way to get the students motivated to learn more about what they may not know about Valentine’s day and the heart.
In the introduction to the lesson constructivist approaches are only a preliminary tool the rest of the activity. Because the lesson plan is meant for children in the K-2 grade level who are in the preoperational stage of thinking they need more assistance to reach such an abstract conclusion such as the answer of the origin of the symbol of a heart on Valentine’s day. What the constructivist approach does include in this lesson is the allowance for students to begin to consider any ideas they may already have about the answer to the question “What is the origin of the shape of the heart symbol?” After receiving the information of the answer and other facts about the heart and Valentine’s day students can create new schemas or modify old schemas. The student can now organize what they learned into a new schema that will help them develop a new understanding of the word origin and what other origins there are.
Once students become motivated and engaged in active discussion then they are able to process what they find out about the history of the heart symbol. Through use of the information processing theory the students can effectively store and retrieve what will be learned in the second activity. The active engagement of students with the material will be more memorable for them because they can have a physical attachment of the information to the event. This testing of new information will help solidify what they have just learned and will stay in their memory in the long term. Both of these aspects of the student’s active engagement with the material will increase the probability that students will remember what they learned for a long time.
The second activity is very consistent with Piaget and Vygotsky’s theory of social collaboration with children for development. They are first given a research sheet containing the facts of the history of the heart symbol to read over. This will solidify what they may have guessed correctly or incorrectly about where this symbol was originated. The students are then placed into groups of four and each group is called on to answer questions about what they just learned. Because the students are arranged in teams they can help each other find the answers to the questions. The student’s interaction with their peers will help them develop a new schema for information searching and how to efficiently work with the other students.
Because the students in this lesson are so heavily focused on interacting with each other to find the right answers they will be able to help each other as a team. This emphasis leads to a greater understanding of compassion for each student. Rather than individual competition the students build greater skills of the ability to work together. Skills such as: communication, time management, self efficacy, and a willingness to help others. The relay aspect of the game will help students effectively but quickly find the information to answer for the game. Students will want to help others win the game and motivate other to gain confidence in the concepts that they learn.
In the third activity, the teacher asks students to create their own artwork of what they could turn their heart into. This allows students to brainstorm ideas about what they have learned and create something based on that. It also helps the students wind down after an active and engaging activity such as the trivia relay game. This is beneficial for students to let themselves fully process what they learned by thinking about the information apart from others. It is still active because it is something that is tactile but it’s not as active as a collaborative game like the other activity was. The activity is also great for students to construct their own meaning of they have learned about Valentine’s Day and the heart.
Furthermore, the visual aspect when creating the artwork during the lesson will also help students associate what they learned about the origin of a heart symbol from the visual representation. They will be able to relate the information to the artwork they construct from what they learned. Associations with visual images to the lesson is very helpful for the students because the brain uses their visual senses the most. Humans generally relate to the visual senses before any of the other ones.
The teacher then reads a book about Valentine’s day poems to the class. The teacher stops during the reading to ask questions about the book and the lesson. The book shows the negative examples of what hurt the character’s feelings. As a group the students must then deduce what nice things could have been said instead. This is done deductively because the students are only shown the negative examples of the poems in the story. They also do not have to figure out the rule the teacher has already likely explained to speak nicely to the other students.
After the reading and discussion of the story the students must pull another student’s name out of a box to create their own Valentine’s day poem for another student. This activity allows students to apply what they have learned by lesson and examples into a concrete practice. This coincides with the information-processing model because students are actively engaging and constructing a poem from what was learned. The information-processing model states that students must be “interested” and “stimulated” by the lesson suggested by the theory. This ensures that the students will remember what they learned in the long term. Students are provided with the material and instruction to deductively create a poem for their fellow classmate.
The teacher provides the students with a copy of the template for writing Valentines to model a nice poem for their peer. This scaffold coincides with Vygotsky’s view of development by allowing the students to follow a step by step plan for their poem. This activity allows students to be in their proximal development by completing an assignment with the availability to ask an instructor for assistance. The lesson plan is even inclusive to English language learners by providing them with the story for examples and a rhyming dictionary. These aspects of development will help students create new schemas for how to write a poem structurally and with compassion for other students.
The history of Valentine’s day and the heart lesson plan is consistent with these main aspects of learning and development. The plan follows the developmental theories of Piaget and Vygotsky through social interaction, stages of development, and learning within the zone of proximal development. The plans also follows the stimulation and engagement between the students and the learned material through the information-processing theory. Finally, the lesson plan uses some constructivist approaches to learn and create meaning based on what was taught in the lesson. These approaches to development and learning help students interact with each other as a team, empathize with each other, gain self confidence, and create their own ideas about what they have learned and what else they will need to know.
Many of the characteristics of the lesson plan chosen embody Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories of development. Similar to Piaget and Vygotsky’s theories, the lesson heavily emphasizes social interaction and collaboration between students. These social interactions will help students organize new schemas based on what they already knew about Valentine’s day to create a new schema from what they will learn about the holiday. The active engagement with students and the lesson material will help them store and retrieve information more easily through the information processing theory. The lesson plan also heavily emphasizes the importance of constructivist approaches in teaching and learning. Most characteristics of the history of Valentine’s lesson plan are consistent with these main aspects of learning and development.
The first activity in the lesson encourages students to construct their own ideas about where they think the shape of a heart comes from. The students will then be able to think by imagining possible reasons to the origin of the shape of the heart. A discussion of the topic before it is introduced is a great way to gauge what kinds of ideas the students may have before informing them. This activity is also a great way to get the students motivated to learn more about what they may not know about Valentine’s day and the heart.
In the introduction to the lesson constructivist approaches are only a preliminary tool the rest of the activity. Because the lesson plan is meant for children in the K-2 grade level who are in the preoperational stage of thinking they need more assistance to reach such an abstract conclusion such as the answer of the origin of the symbol of a heart on Valentine’s day. What the constructivist approach does include in this lesson is the allowance for students to begin to consider any ideas they may already have about the answer to the question “What is the origin of the shape of the heart symbol?” After receiving the information of the answer and other facts about the heart and Valentine’s day students can create new schemas or modify old schemas. The student can now organize what they learned into a new schema that will help them develop a new understanding of the word origin and what other origins there are.
Once students become motivated and engaged in active discussion then they are able to process what they find out about the history of the heart symbol. Through use of the information processing theory the students can effectively store and retrieve what will be learned in the second activity. The active engagement of students with the material will be more memorable for them because they can have a physical attachment of the information to the event. This testing of new information will help solidify what they have just learned and will stay in their memory in the long term. Both of these aspects of the student’s active engagement with the material will increase the probability that students will remember what they learned for a long time.
The second activity is very consistent with Piaget and Vygotsky’s theory of social collaboration with children for development. They are first given a research sheet containing the facts of the history of the heart symbol to read over. This will solidify what they may have guessed correctly or incorrectly about where this symbol was originated. The students are then placed into groups of four and each group is called on to answer questions about what they just learned. Because the students are arranged in teams they can help each other find the answers to the questions. The student’s interaction with their peers will help them develop a new schema for information searching and how to efficiently work with the other students.
Because the students in this lesson are so heavily focused on interacting with each other to find the right answers they will be able to help each other as a team. This emphasis leads to a greater understanding of compassion for each student. Rather than individual competition the students build greater skills of the ability to work together. Skills such as: communication, time management, self efficacy, and a willingness to help others. The relay aspect of the game will help students effectively but quickly find the information to answer for the game. Students will want to help others win the game and motivate other to gain confidence in the concepts that they learn.
In the third activity, the teacher asks students to create their own artwork of what they could turn their heart into. This allows students to brainstorm ideas about what they have learned and create something based on that. It also helps the students wind down after an active and engaging activity such as the trivia relay game. This is beneficial for students to let themselves fully process what they learned by thinking about the information apart from others. It is still active because it is something that is tactile but it’s not as active as a collaborative game like the other activity was. The activity is also great for students to construct their own meaning of they have learned about Valentine’s Day and the heart.
Furthermore, the visual aspect when creating the artwork during the lesson will also help students associate what they learned about the origin of a heart symbol from the visual representation. They will be able to relate the information to the artwork they construct from what they learned. Associations with visual images to the lesson is very helpful for the students because the brain uses their visual senses the most. Humans generally relate to the visual senses before any of the other ones.
The teacher then reads a book about Valentine’s day poems to the class. The teacher stops during the reading to ask questions about the book and the lesson. The book shows the negative examples of what hurt the character’s feelings. As a group the students must then deduce what nice things could have been said instead. This is done deductively because the students are only shown the negative examples of the poems in the story. They also do not have to figure out the rule the teacher has already likely explained to speak nicely to the other students.
After the reading and discussion of the story the students must pull another student’s name out of a box to create their own Valentine’s day poem for another student. This activity allows students to apply what they have learned by lesson and examples into a concrete practice. This coincides with the information-processing model because students are actively engaging and constructing a poem from what was learned. The information-processing model states that students must be “interested” and “stimulated” by the lesson suggested by the theory. This ensures that the students will remember what they learned in the long term. Students are provided with the material and instruction to deductively create a poem for their fellow classmate.
The teacher provides the students with a copy of the template for writing Valentines to model a nice poem for their peer. This scaffold coincides with Vygotsky’s view of development by allowing the students to follow a step by step plan for their poem. This activity allows students to be in their proximal development by completing an assignment with the availability to ask an instructor for assistance. The lesson plan is even inclusive to English language learners by providing them with the story for examples and a rhyming dictionary. These aspects of development will help students create new schemas for how to write a poem structurally and with compassion for other students.
The history of Valentine’s day and the heart lesson plan is consistent with these main aspects of learning and development. The plan follows the developmental theories of Piaget and Vygotsky through social interaction, stages of development, and learning within the zone of proximal development. The plans also follows the stimulation and engagement between the students and the learned material through the information-processing theory. Finally, the lesson plan uses some constructivist approaches to learn and create meaning based on what was taught in the lesson. These approaches to development and learning help students interact with each other as a team, empathize with each other, gain self confidence, and create their own ideas about what they have learned and what else they will need to know.