Lesson 5 Reflection- Introduction of the SIOP model (lesson plan)

    Yeah! It is already week 5, and next week is reading week!!👀👀 We had our first 'official' lecture class with Dr Lina this week. Dr Lina had prepared an unusual seating arrangement for us, a 'U' shape forum lecture session, just like the Malaysian parliament conference. This was the first time we weren't sitting in a group for the first time. Dr Lina linked previous knowledge and provided feedback on our weekly reflective blogs before the class began. She covered the 'thinking tool', various evidence-based learning and subconscious learning as the introduction. She then thoroughly explained the SIOP model one by one with a provided SIOP lesson plan sample for us. The SIOP model is made up of eight components: lesson preparation, background building, comprehensible input, strategies, interaction, practice, lesson delivery, and review and assessment. It includes 30 features in all. Dr Lina then invited us to participate in a 'think pair share' activity to conclude all she had taught us in class. Iris, my partner, and I discussed our perspectives on SIOP. I also learned something new from her about how to plan relevant activities for students. Dr Lina even invited me to recall and summarize the lesson with my own summary of the SIOP at the end of the class. Amazingly, I can remember 90% of what's taught in class. During the tutorial, Dr Lina requested us to discuss and answer a question regarding Luna's lesson plan. After the discussion, we will have a presenter to present the answer and Prof. Lee, a guest speaker will further explain SIOP to us.

    I was ecstatic when I walked into the class with the new seating arrangement. I was most interested and enjoying myself in this lesson so far. I appreciated how Dr. Lina broke down the difficult SIOP model into manageable chunks, as well as the 'think pair share' activity. I gained a lot from her explanation, especially how she made the new information easier to understand. I read through the PDF provided by Dr Lina before the classes and discovered that designing various activities in class is a lot of fun. The book went into great detail about how to create a SIOP lesson plan. This reminded me of Dr. Chu's and Dr. Sharimila's seminars from the previous semester, where we were also asked to create a lesson plan. Despite my prior familiarity with lesson planning, I felt confused at the start of the tutorial. I was unsure of the criteria of objectives, and it was difficult for me to understand how SIOP works. Fortunately, Prof Lee's explanation assisted me in getting through this, and I gained new insights from him!

    

In both sessions, Dr Lina focused on the dialogic assessment theory by recalling our prior knowledge, which corresponded with a new hypothesis: the cognitive set-point hypothesis (Machiels-Bongaerts et al., 1993). The level of the cognitive set-point is supposed to be decided by an estimate of the students' minimum degree of understanding, the student's goals and motivation, and external influences such as the predicted consequences of not being able to replicate the knowledge sufficiently. Before delivering the following material, Dr Lina used slides, cold-calling (wheel), and sharings to assess and connect our prior knowledge. Based on the cognitive information processing model (Stahl, 2008), it assists us in organising information representations in working memory during the recall sessions, integrating them, and then linking them to previously learned information from their long-term memories (Mayer, 2014) before learning new information (Joshi, 2006). Furthermore, activating prior knowledge assists students in allocating more attention to new relevant information for which no prior knowledge activation occurred in comparison to a control condition; thus, better recall for the entire content, which can be attributed to higher recall scores for information that had not previously been activated.

    Second, the detailed explanation, examples, and guest speaker invitation were all consistent with Bloom's taxonomy; understanding is important in cognitive growth. Dr Lina went over the entire SIOP in depth, including the guidelines and real-world examples like Luna's lesson plan. This is also connected to one of the features of SIOP: comprehensible input. The use of exemplar theory in concept learning is also used to encourage students to build an understanding of the concept topics by thinking about logical examples because comprehension requires more cognitive processing than simply memorization (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). Various examples based on cognitive learning theory will aid learners in beginning to incorporate knowledge into their existing cognitive schemes through which they interpret the world. Furthermore, Dr Lina's guest speaker session is based on Vygotsky's social cognitive theory. The integration of our participation, the interaction between lectures and students, and the QnA session promotes our knowledge construction (Wang&Wang, 2013, p.1387) and improves our memory (Murray, 1991) to increase the degree of understanding and capacity to integrate and synthesise content (Nasmith&Steinert, 2001). By asking deeper questions regarding the SIOP, we can build our cognitive and metacognitive abilities.

    

Lastly, there are the 'think pair share' activities, which are cooperative learning tactics. It gives students more time to reflect and has been demonstrated to increase student participation in debates and improve the quality of student responses (Rowe, 1972).  Students must analyse, relate, and assimilate new material with their prior knowledge and experiences for effective learning to occur (Cortright et al., 2005).  To learn, students must actively analyse knowledge (Lujan & DiCarlo, 2006), which is related to the 'thinking tool' theory (Lina, 2022). Students must use their cognition and metacognition to grasp, organise, summarise, and translate before sharing with their partners throughout the relate and interpret process.  Direct instruction and other teacher-to-student contacts may not always provide these possibilities for students. In addition, think-pair-share will boost students' self-confidence and willingness to participate in whole-class conversations (Sampsel, 2013).

    To summarise, I thoroughly enjoyed Dr Lina's classes. As a pre-service teacher, I found this week's seminars to be educational and beneficial. Aside from SIOP knowledge, a key takeaway from this week is that I learned how to break down content, tie content to real-world context, and convey context meaningfully. I observed Dr. Lina's 'think pair share' technique for assisting us in recalling and constructing our knowledge. 'Think pair share', in my opinion, not only aids in cognitive formation but also creates a comfortable area for students to share. This is because students can choose their partner based on their interests, which is especially important for introverted students who want to express themselves more openly. I would like to incorporate the lesson delivery techniques and 'think pair share' into my lesson plan and class. If I become a teacher, I must support and guide my students' metacognitive processes and alleviate their cognitive load when facilitating a topic.

   

Thanks for reading!! Bye!

References:

Anderson, L. W., & Krathwolh, D. R. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives. New York NY: Longmans. Retrieve from: https://www.uky.edu/~rsand1/china2018/texts/Anderson-Krathwohl%20-%20A%20taxonomy%20for%20learning%20teaching%20and%20assessing.pdf

Cortright, R. N., Collins, H. L. & DiCarlo, S. E. (2005).  Peer instruction enhanced meaningful learning: Ability to solve novel problems. Advances in Physiology Education, 29(2), 107111. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00060.2004

Joshi, M. (2006). Diversity in lecture delivery. Journal of NELTA, 11(1-2), 1-151.

Lina Guo (2022) Teachers’ mediation in students’ development of cognition and metacognition, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 50(5), 458-473, DOI: 10.1080/1359866X.2020.1846158

Lujan, H., & DiCarlo, S. E. (2005). Too much teaching, not enough learning: what is the solution? Advances in Physiology Education, 30(1), 17-22. https://doi.org/10.1152/advan.00061.2005

Machiels-Bongaerts, M., Schmidt, H. G. & Boshuizen, H. P. A. (1993). Effects of mobilizing prior knowledge on information processing:  studies of free recall and allocation of study time. British Journal of Psychology, 4,481498.

Mayer, R. E., & Estrella, G. (2014). Benefits of emotional design in multimedia instruction. Learning and Instruction, 33, 12-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2014.02.004

Murray, H. G. (1991). Effective teaching behaviours in the college classrooms. Higher education: Handbook of theory and research, 135-172. Bronx, NY: Agathon Press. Retrieve from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ909053.pdf

Nasmith, L., & Steinert, Y. (2001). The evaluation of a workshop to promote interactive lecturing. Teaching and learning in medicine, 13(1), 43-48. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328015tlm1301_8

Rowe, M. (1972).  Wait-time and rewards as instructional variables: Their influence on language, logic, and fate control.

Sampsel, A. (2013). Finding the effects of Think-Pair-Share on student confidence and participation.  Honors Projects. 28.
https://scholarworks.bgsu.edu/honorsprojects/28

Wang, K., & Wang, X. (2013). Promoting knowledge construction and cognitive development: A case             study of teacher’s questioning. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3, 1387-1393.