Semester Project 6 Title: Personal Glossary Purpose:
This activity is designed to help students gain technical and practical understanding
of concepts presented in the text.
Objectives:
- Develop a teaching resource
- Gain understanding of abstract concepts
Student Activity:
One aspect of becoming a professional in any field is learning the jargon associated
with that field. Teaching is no exception. In your educational psychology class,
you have the opportunity to become familiar with many abstract concepts and
jargon associated with teaching. This project will help you understand those
terms and become more comfortable using them. For this activity, you will choose
terms from the text and develop your own professional glossary. It is a good
idea to choose terms that are difficult for you — by the end of this project,
you will know them! A list of terms may be provided to you, or you may develop
your own list of fifty to seventy-five terms. For each term, do these three
things: (1) locate and copy the text definition, (2) put that definition in
your own words, and (3) generate an example or personal story related to what
the term means.
A general list of terms follows:
- Advance organizers
- Behaviorism
- Constructivism
- Equilibration
- Inclusion
- Learning
- Learning goals
- Median
- Metacognition
- Punishment
- Reliability
- Scaffolding
- Transfer
- Assessment
- Conditioning
- Development
- Extrinsic motivation
- Intrinsic motivation
- Learning disabilities
- Mean
- Mode
- Mnemonics
- Negative reinforcement
- Positive reinforcement
- Reflectivity
- Research
- Theory
- Validity
Assessment:
This glossary may be turned in or may be utilized as a resource for exams or
other assignments.
Each entry should have three parts: (1) the text definition, (2) your interpretation
of that definition (i.e., put it in your own words), and (3) a personal or practical
illustration of this term.
Variations:
- Form small groups. Groups are responsible for terms of two to three chapters
of the book. Compile these lists and create a single glossary for the class.
Make copies for all students or post on the web.
- As an option, you can turn in fifty to seventy-five words in an electronic
format. One to three students can volunteer to compile and sort through the
terms in one gigantic file. Weed out multiple postings of the same term.
