Last week in my Inquiries to Teaching class I had to do a report on a theorist and was assigned to Albert Bandura. I had always heard about him from my other education classes, but i never knew exactly what he was known for. He was actually considered the “father” of the cognitivist movement. When he researched he specialized in the social-cognitive theory and self efficacy. He was also responsible for the bobo doll studies. I found these studies very interesting when i was reading about them. Basically what took place was, Bandura had one of his students beat up and yell at a bobo doll. Then the young students watched a tape of this and were then directed to a room which had bobo dolls. The students acted exactly as the lady in the video had and they beat up the doll. This is what Bandura called observational learning or modeling and it might not seem all that amazing to the average person however it was an amazing accomplishment for the cognitivists. This was all very interesting to me and i plan on using it when i become a teacher to try and have my students model the right behavior in the classroom and for different projects.

-Melissa Ninni

My second observation in the kindergarten classroom was about a week ago. This time when we were there we had to draw a layout of the classroom and write down their daily schedule. When i was writing down everything that they were doing, it was like writing a book, i had so much information. These children accomplish so many little tasks in a short amount of time.

Another thing that i noticed while at this observation was that the children will focus on one thing that happened during the class time and all they will want to do is talk about it. On the day before i came to observe one of the children in the class was holding the flag for the flag salute and he passed out. Since i was not there when this happened all of the students wanted to tell me all about it. Then when they went to their music special for the day and they needed to tell that teacher all about it. Children love to tell stories about things that they found interesting and know that people will want to hear.

-Melissa Ninni

This past Tuesday, on September, 25, i began my observations for my inquiries to teaching class. I was placed in a kindergarten classroom in Logan Twp. The class i will be in for this semester had eighteen students. My time there was from 8:30am-11:30am and while I was there I observed many different things that took place. This teachers classroom was decorated with many colors and all different artwork that the students made. Her classroom was lively and fun however, she had control over the class and they listened to her very well. In the beginning of the class they came in and had circle time and went over everything from the calender to how many students wanted to buy lunch today. They did many different small tasks. However, for kindergartners these small tasks added up and took up about an hour of their day. Next, they had their special, which was music class, and they walked politely down the hall to the classroom for music. While they were there the teacher set up snack time and literacy time. Then, the students came back and had snack then they washed their hands and sat in lines on the carpet. It was now time for literacy and they practiced saying full sentences, telling where capital letters go, and putting punctuation at the end of their sentences. Then the teacher read a book and the class discussed words that rhymed. By the time all of this was over it was 11:30am and time for me to leave. I was shocked at how they did so many little tasks that ended up taking three hours.

-Melissa Ninni