Literacy for the 21ft Century Analysis

The federal government created a sequence of information and directives which will inspire a cognitive view of reading. This new information has changed the existing way educators taught reading and what resources they use to teach. This change comes from experimental psychologists; these psychologists believe that students will learn better if the tasks were broken down into smaller parts. Successful educators will do anything to guarantee the success of their students. In the textbook Literacy for the 21st Century: A Balanced Approach there are eight principles an educator can use to be successful in the classroom.

Principle One

This principle covers the different ways an educator can understand how their students learn. There are teacher-centered learning and student-centered learning. Behaviorism is the only theory listed under the teacher-centered learning. This theory is teacher-centered since it emphasis is on the teacher’s role. Behaviorism concentrates on the visible characteristics of students’ behavior. B.F. Skinner created behaviorism; he suggests that students are motivated by reinforcements (reward). When the student is doing something negative it should have a specific consequence. This can have negative results like “resentment, limitation of transfer, may cause dependency on teachers, the undermining of intrinsic motivation, and viewing learning as a means to an end” (Brennen, n.d.). Skinner “explained that students learn to read by learning a series of discrete skills” (Tompkins, 2014) these skills must be learned through direct instruction. This can be used in the classroom by giving a token for a preferred behavior. Students can exchange them for prizes. When a student has a negative behavior the educator c...

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...folding: Reading and writing as natural

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