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Analyzing A Primary Classroom

Over the course of the last few decades scientists have begun to realize how important it is to

study learning. They have started to realize that the knowledge of how humans learn has the

potential to significantly impact the field of education and its outcomes on each individual

student (Greeno et al., 2003). In this I provide feedback on a classroom’s ability to incorporate

the seven learning principles in their day to day activities in their learning. This paper begins

with describing the primary aged classroom and evaluates them according to 6 different learning

principles including eliciting and connecting to prior knowledge, social constructivism, cognitive

load, limits of a working memory, active and experiential learning, and developing a rich network

of understandings and skills.

The learning environment I have chosen to evaluate is a grade 1 and 2 split classroom in a

public school with 20 students. The kids are eager young learners and love to constantly be on

the move like little busy bees. They’re constantly in need of doing something and to feel like

they don’t have to sit still for too long. They tend to be unfocused and distracted, especially

when an exciting event or activity is coming up. However they are all good thinkers and have

strong collaborative skills. The students all have a strong capability for learning but there are

also other important factors to consider like the fact that there are a couple students with

disabilities who require extra support in different learning areas. There are both needs for

support in an academic sense but also in a social sense which is part of the support system

needed for a student to excel at their learning. This versatile classroom is unique in the sense

that they all get a chance to work with different students as their desks move around a lot and

they get to work with various different educators as they have a different science teacher,
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the reading program supports ea and various friends of the teacher who like to come in for visits

and teach the students about their fields of expertise.

A particular strength I have noticed in this classroom is the student’s ability to connect prior

knowledge to all of their new learning experiences. How a student already knows and prefers to

learn contributes to how willing a student is to try new things and want to understand new

concepts that they know are going to require hard work. (Well-Trained Mind Academy, 2020).

The students in the classroom are very engaged learners because of this principle. I’ve seen

how their prior knowledge about their interests and hobbies such as sports teams, and dance

teams have given them the confidence to work well with others which is why they thrive so well

in their learning when they get to try and figure out a problem together. One of the strategies

that I have seen the teacher

use to do a good job with this principle is to utilize graphic organizers in many of their

assignments. After the teacher would read a story to them she had them all organize good and

bad traits about different characters as well as compare and contrast the book to other stories

they read in class. This was an excellent visual tool to help the student connect their prior

knowledge of morality and use it to learn new concepts about characters and why it is important

to understand them on a more complex level. It is important for students to have a visual tool to

activate their previous experiences and knowledge to familiarize themselves with understanding

similarities and differences. (Virginia Tech, 2023). Another strategy I’ve seen the teacher use

that makes this learning principle one of the class's strengths is the use of morning work.

Everyday they start their days with a question they have to answer. It is usually an opinion

question like would you rather have a pet crocodile or a pet shark. The idea here is that the
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question is used as a segway into a lesson and it activates the student’s prior knowledge that

they will need for their learning throughout the whole day. These are the reasons that I believe

the class does an excellent job of connecting prior knowledge to help maximize their newfound

learning and knowledge.

Another strength I believe the grade 1 and 2 split class has is their social constructivism. This

principle of learning means that knowledge is built through social interactions between other

classmates, teachers and the elements of the world (Nickerson, 2024). They have a separate

teacher for science who loves developing their set of knowledge by allowing them to see and

experience firsthand the things he is trying to teach them. When he is teaching them about

different types of animals and plants that are native to Ontario he takes the class on nature

walks around the community to show them in person what he is trying to teach them about

these natural elements. He gives the students clipboards and paper to take with them and work

with partners to write down the things they notice about the different plants and animals. In this

type of learning not only are the kids learning how to interact to benefit their learning with

partners, but they are also interacting with the natural elements of the world. Observing the way

in which a squirrel collects food before the winter is much more memorable than merely

explaining how hibernation works. It makes your knowledge more durable to study in terms of

location (The Mcgraw Center, 2024). Another strategy I’ve witnessed in this class is when the

teacher assigns them random teams and they all have to use the tools in front of them like

cubes, coins and chips to try and figure out how they’re going to solve the math problem. In this

way they have to learn to work with people they wouldn’t normally choose and build trust with

one another to be confident enough to believe their solution to the problem will work. They have

to use their predetermined knowledge about the way the world works as context to help them
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solve the problem. This is all necessary for the learning principle of social constructivism to

apply to the classroom.

A weakness in the way their learning is set up is in the cognitive load theories elements. The

cognitive load theory refers to how long information becomes stored in your long term memory

based on how overwhelmed the mind is when intaking information. (Clure, 2020). I think this is

one of their weaknesses due to how overwhelming their learning is on the Ipad station. Every

morning the class has centers. One of the centers that is installed into this system is the Ipad

station where they get to listen to ebooks. I personally think that logging into the program itself is

way too complex as it has multiple steps and the students always require assistance just to get

started. I also think because there is no interactive component built into this program where they

are just listening to a voice and reading out facts to them that the information they’re being told

doesn’t have much chance of making it into their long term memory. It would be much more

helpful if they used a reading program that had mini quizzes on the readings they just heard.

That way they will decide not to interact with any possible distractions like talking to friends

while they listen to the book. Engagement and collaboration are important to every classroom

community (Blayone et al., 2017). This is why they need to work on how to utilize technology so

that it doesn’t interfere with the student’s cognitive load capabilities.

I also believe this class has a shortcoming when it comes to the limits of working memory.

According to psychologists there is a limit to the capacity and duration of memory (Evagora,

2021). This means that these things need to be taken into account in every aspect of learning. It

would be beneficial for a teacher to use discussions about what a student has learned

throughout the duration of the lesson in order to transfer the knowledge from their working
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memory to their long term memory. In the classroom I noticed that at the end of all the lessons

they rushed to pack up so they could simply move on to the next thing. The result of this is that

sometimes students could not remember what they learned the day before and had to

completely review everything from the day before in order to be able to build onto it the next day.

This is why I believe the teacher needs to find some more strategies to deal with the limits of the

working memory to enhance the student’s learning.

This classroom does an exceptional job of including elements of active learning in the lessons

and activities. Active learning is a newfound study method which explains the benefits of

learning by engaging students through participation in tasks and different cognitive processes

(“Active Learning : Theory and Practice,” 2024/2022, p. 1). One example of how this classroom

does it is in their weekly game of “stand up, hand up, pair up”. In this game they are given a

hypothetical scenario where they have to answer which option they would rather have if they

were in this scenario. They then have to put their hand up and find someone else in the class

with their hand up and chat with them about their preferences. Once they’ve done that they put

their hand up again and find

someone else to pair up with until the time is up. This game is very good for active learning

because it encourages them to share their insights through collaboration and reflection which

helps strengthen both parties in their learning (McPheat, 2023). Another way this classroom

utilizes active and experiential learning is through their different stations in their centers. One of

the centers is games where they play board games that help them with their reading and

language skills. They often have board games with different ending sounds where they have to

make a rhyme with that word and read aloud the sound they landed on. This helps them better

grasp tricky word concepts like the th’s at the beginning or end of a word. Another center is the
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scavenger word hunt. In this center they have to find the pink papers with tricky words that they

have to write down in a certain order which helps familiarize the students with these words.

These methods help the kids gain hands-on experience which further intensifies their learning

and gives them practical skills they are going to be able to use in the real world (McPheat,

2023). These are some of the activities that the students do to enhance their active learning.

This is how I know these kids are gaining more out of their school experience through this

principle of active learning.

Lastly I think this class does a phenomenal job of developing a network of understanding and

skills every single day. All of the students at the beginning of the year come in with desires and

things that they want out of life but don’t have enough understanding of the world or have the

skills they need to be able to accomplish their goals in the future. Some of the skills they have

already begun to learn in this classroom setting include communication, creativity, and problem

solving. They do all sorts of group projects for various subjects and they all have to

communicate with one another to plan out who will be assigned to do what based on their

knowledge of each other's strengths and weaknesses. One way I’ve seen them develop their

creativity is through their writers workshops. Once a week they are given a different prompt to

write about. Seeing their imagination in creating the storyline, characters, setting and utilizing

their art skills to add some illustrations to their story and how each week they get better and

better shows just how much their creativity skills are developing. “In order to perform skills at a

higher rate and for it to continue to develop you need to practice them” (Tepylo, 2024). Which is

why having this workshop weekly allows for their creativity to consistently be growing in new

innovative ways. Their understanding of how to problem solve is another part of their network of

growing skills that the class’s learning environment is doing very well. The teacher gives the

students open ended questions in language and allows the students to work together to arrive at
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their own solutions to the problem. I’ve also seen the students problem solve during the class in

non academic ways. For example there were 2 students from Ukraine who had a harder time in

every element of the class as English is not their first language. I watched a few students either

use their actions or draw things out for these 2 students to try and explain what

they meant when the Ukrainian students were having a hard time understanding what to do in

group work. Their desire to help each other accommodate their shortcomings in language has

given them the foundations of how they’re going to need to accommodate others in the future

when they enter the real world to work or interact with friends. These are the many ways this

classroom is developing a rich network of understanding and skills.

Throughout the witnessing and analysis of this case study on the grade 1 and 2 classroom I

have come to a conclusion of a few things I think they could do to overall improve the learning

environment in their classroom. Firstly I believe they should implement the use of more

technology and do so in a way that doesn’t overwhelm their cognitive load. I think they should

have technological interactive activities. Another thing I believe would be very helpful overall

would be to build upon their active learning by adding some more movement activities that get

students to work together while they are solving a problem. This would help release some of

their high levels of energy so that they can regain their focus. Lastly I think it would be a great

idea to have more exit discussions in small groups and large groups depending on the activity

about what they learned. This way they can continue to build upon their previous learning and

knowledge everyday. Overall this class has a strong learning environment.

● Active Learning : Theory and Practice. (2022). In O. Lutsenko & G. Lutsenko

(Eds.), directory.doabooks.org (p. 1). IntechOpen.

https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/90161 (Original work

published 2024)

● Blayone, T. J. B., vanOostveen, R., Barber, W., DiGiuseppe, M., & Childs, E.

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● Clure, K. (2020, October 13). Cognitive Load Theory (Definition + Examples).

Practical Psychology.

https://practicalpie.com/cognitive-load-theory/

● Evagora, V. (2021, September 23). “Working Memory is Limited: Six Ways

Teachers Can Address This” by Vanessa Evagora. School of Education.

https://educationblog.buckingham.ac.uk/2021/09/23/working-memory-is-li

mited-six-ways-teachers-can-address-this-by-vanessa-evagora/

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● Learning Styles vs. Learning Preferences _ Well-Trained Mind Academy - EDST

1000 Foundations of Learning - Perusall

● McPheat, S. (2023, October 4). 15 Active Learning Strategies (with Examples) |

Skillshub. Skillshub.com.

https://www.skillshub.com/blog/active-learning-strategies-examples/

● Nickerson, C. (2024, February 14). Social Constructionism Definition and

Examples. Www.simplypsychology.org; Simply Psychology.

https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-constructionism.html

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