Ch 6 Case Study Analysis

1. After participating in this activity, what do you think the students will remember? How might those memories differ from those students would have if they only read about the Civil War in their textbook?

The students are going to remember how the war was fought, what the day to day life of a soldier was like, how it was to fight against people they knew, and what it may have been like to be in a battle.

2. How does Mr. West’s use of a Civil War re-enactment engage students’ emotions? What is the relationship between emotions and learning?

Having the students be part of the war, to be actually on a side and fight people they knew, brought the civil war much closer to the students. To be an active part of an re-enactment gets your emotions going much more than reading about it from a history book. The relationship between emotion and learning is that if there is an emotional connection you are much more able to remember it than if there is no emotional connection. Reading about the Civil War from a book does not engage one's emotions, but being part of a re-enactment draws the person in and connects them emotionally to the Civil War.

3. Based on the principles of dual-coding theory, what activities would be effective for Mr. West to use as a follow-up to the re-enactment?

Mr. West could have his students write a paper on how they felt during the re-enactment. In the paper he could have them state how they think the real soldiers felt and why they think the soldiers fought in the war. Another activity he could do is to have a class discussion about the re-enactment, asking the students if they felt it was a life-like re-enactment, and asking them to listen to the experience that was had on both sides.

4. Who do you think provides better instruction for his students? Support your answer from an information processing perspective.

I think Mr. Richards provides better instruction for his students. The students receive the information in many different forms which helps them to understand it better and also allows it to move to longterm memory. By having many different ways of teaching, Mr. Richards has helped to get the students attention so that the informations can be processed and moved into long term memory. By having a detailed outline of what is going on in the classroom, the student can look on the board to see what they will be doing and this will help to get them thinking about it and help them throughout the lesson.

5. How would you expect the students’ learning outcomes to differ depending on which teacher they had?

I would expect the student's learning outcome from Mr. Dunkin's class to be quite low. They only ever learned the information in one way, and it seems that they would memorize if for the week, spit it out on the end of the week exam, and then never remember it again. The student's learning outcomes from Mr. Richards' class would be quite different from Mr. Dunkin's class. In Mr. Richards' class the students would have a greater chance of having the information they learned go into long term memory. They did different activities each day which helped them to process the information better. Another way the learning outcome would be different is that the students had surprise quizzes and a unit test that would test their knowledge well.