blog #4: gee chapter 5

While reading this chapter there is one point that stuck out quite clearly for me. When Gee stated, "Learners cannot do much with lots of overt information that a teacher has explicitly told them outside the context of immersion in actual practice. At the same time, learners cannot learn without some overt information" (119). I find this interesting because I have never thought about this middle area with students. I work at an after school program where I help students with their homework a lot of the time and I feel like I am cheating them out of their learning experience if I have to tell them how to do something (I like for them to work and discover it themselves). By reading this from Gee it seems that there are times when it is appropriate to tell students what they need to do. I suppose early grades do involve a lot of this teaching. In Kindergarden you are often told to repeat your abc's after your teacher. It is hard for students in younger age groups to grasp the abstract ideas of math and writing, so maybe it is essential that we give them some of this information to help aid them in their learning.

blog #3: gee chapter 3

In reading Gee and what he has to say about identity and its involvment in learning it is interesting to think back on the learning I had experienced in school. Just as Gee had suggested about the students in science classes approaching the class as scientists, my teachers would do the same thing. When we were to transition into science lessons my teacher would ask us to put on our "scientist hat" and we would then pretend we were scientists. (This is obviously around 2nd grade or so)

Another thing Gee points out is that, "the 'amplification of input principle'. When systems operate according to this principle, they give, for a little input, a lot of output" (64). This seems to me like it would be very important in the classroom with younger students. It is very rewarding for them to work on a task and succeed, but imagine if they were to do very little work on a task and be able to reap great rewards from it.