Learning, Cognition, and Memory

The first needs analysis that I am going to do is going to focus on how my teaching strategies affected learning, cognition and memory in my classroom. This topic seems broad to me, so to make is simpler for myself, I am going to break it down and list some of the areas in which I think improvements could be made.

Learning: Learning seemed to be a scattered problem, with only certain students struggling with this process. Most of my students were able to learn what was expected of them in a reasonable time. However, a few of my students struggled consistently in this area. The main problem that I saw as a hindrance to learning was behavioral issues. One student in particular made very little progress the last half of the year. He was having major issues in his personal life, and made little effort when he was in my classroom. Being successful was not important to him, nothing motivated him, and nothing phased him. What to do? I believe he is very capable of learning, but was being held back by his behavior.

Cognition: Hmm. In my classroom, several of my students had a hard time thinking about things in many different ways. This could be due in part to some of the severe cognitive disabilities that some of my students had, but it could also be due in part to not offering as many opportunities to think about things in lots of different ways. Several of my students with autism had a very difficult time "thinking outside the box", and while I worked with them extensively on this (with some successes, I might add!), I don't know if this is exactly what this category is talking about. Overall, however, I wish that I had had more ideas about how to better encourage my students to think about things in different ways. I have lots of ideas when it comes to teaching resource or general education, but when it comes to Life Skills, I'm a little stumped.

Memory: I had a lot of difficulty in two areas concerning memory this year, those being math and reading. I taught two girls in math, both of whom functioned at about the second grade level. Both girls were learning how to add and subtract with carrying and borrowing. We worked on this skill for the entire year, and while I was able to add to their skill level, there were serious difficulties when it came to one of my students being able to remember the necessary steps. For the entire year, she consistently would remember, and forget, all of the steps for adding and subtracting with carrying and borrowing. When given numerous reminders, she was able to be successful, but she was rarely able to cue herself to follow the appropriate steps. This proved to be frustrating not only for her, but for me, as it made the math process much slower. In reading, I was teaching two students a set of pre-determined sight words and the letters of the alphabet. For the 5 months that I worked with these kiddos, very little improvement was made. They didn't seem to retain anything for more than a day or two, and trying to find ways in which to help them remember was difficult and frustrating. I tried to find ways in which to make the words and letters meaningful, but often, the students remembered the wrong thing. For example, one of my students would see a letter and remember the word I associated with the letter, such as saying Queen when he saw a Q. For the life of him, that poor guy could not remember that it was a Q. I tried various strategies with both kids, but nothing seemed to stick. Coming back after vacations was like starting at square one, with almost nothing being retained.