In looking for the sequence of skills necessary for ultimate mastery of content I think it is first essential to assess students' prior knowledge. This can be done in a variety of ways such as class warm-ups with open-ended questions or by drawing concept maps to illustrate student knowledge. From this point teachers should focus on finding misconceptions in the student's prior knowledge and have the students find a way to replace the erroneous parts of their knowledge with proper knowledge. This can be done by having students research a topic  or do a project that deals with the misconception so that they can see what they are getting wrong. From here teachers should guide students in the way of learning new information and find a way to organize this knowledge in some way. This is important to help students retrieve this information at a later date. This again can be done through research, projects, or a paper or an efficient grouping of the three. this helps students construct and remember the knowledge the teacher wishes their students to learn. Once a teacher believes that their students have learned what the have planned the only step is to re-assess knowledge in order to ensure students have acquired knowledge in the correct way with little to no misconceptions. 

I was very happy to find this article as it speaks directly to my area and this topic. While it is difficult to plan a lesson with this type of learning in mind, this article points out that constructivism in history classrooms only requires students to put a historical hypotheses together. That is, ask students why America may have made the decision to drop Atomic bombs in Japan. Students would be required to research information on the topic and  create a hypotheses as to why historical figures may have acted in this way. Students can then research and discuss whether they would have made the same decision given the information they have found. This will allow students to learn about WWII through their research of American bombings. This allows the student to personally build their knowledge base.

Memory Processes

       When trying to imagine how the information I am learning about memory processes will help me to direct my teaching, two main things strike me. The first is the section on organization. This is because organization seems to fit well into  my field of history. Organization refers to making connections between new information and forming a cohesive structure. This would fit the teaching of history well because as the the teacher I could connect each new event to the last and attempt to add on to my student's knowledge rather than attempting to create new knowledge all together. The second of these things is the use of visual imagery. This refers to mental pictures that are formed to store information. I like this one as I believe that one thing that has helped me with education is attaching a mental image to it. Due to this, I believe I can help my students develop a good image to help them store the information.

http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education-update/jun00/vol42/num04/Enhancing-Teaching-and-Learning-Through-Visual-Imagery.aspx

Cognitive Learning

        Considering the fact that I wish to teach history, some might find it strange that I have no interest in rote memory learning. I do not believe that it is necessary for students to memorize and be tested on endless dates and minute facts about history. Instead I hope to have my students learn broad concepts and understand the reasons behind the decisions made in history, while also gaining a firm understanding of the chronological order of events. The skill that students will need to be able to do this relates to  the meaningful learning principal and is known as elaboration. Elaboration requires students to use prior knowledge to better store more information than creating all new information. This process will be important in students learning beyond rote memorization of facts. University of Illinois education professor Brenda M. Trafenenko says that rote memorization causes students to think that history is boring, and therefore, they learn less. For this reason I hope to rely as little on endless recitation of facts and focus more on the actual history.

Link: http://www.news.illinois.edu/news/09/0212history.html

Formal and Informal Assessment in Class

When trying to think of possible ways to assess student knowledge in my class, I immediately think of testing. My thought process is that assessment is testing, and I have to get away from that.I have to understand that testing is just one form of assessment.

With that being said I must think about a way to assess my student's acquisition of knowledge in an informal way that does not require traditional testing. The first way I believe that I could do this is simply to ask my students to discuss with me their feelings on what I am teaching that day. This simple discussion would allow me to evaluate both individual and class feelings on the material. Another informal assessment would be journal entries both before and after classes. I see using these journal in lessons that I perceive to be particularly difficult for my students and  I would ask them to journal before the lesson and after the lecture So I can judge how they have grown in the material. This would allow me to see my students growth as it relates to their own prior knowledge.

Formal assessments in History always make me think of horrible multiple-choice question tests that only aim to teach you specific answers to questions. Education is and should be so much more than just asking a student to repeat an answer their teacher gave them. Due to this, my preferred form of assessment would be open-ended essay questions that ask students to give an answer and explain it. While they may have an answer I was not looking for, it may still be right. This would allow me to assess their ability to reasonably answer a question rather than regurgitating answers. The last form of assessment is the classic projects history is known for. Without the specifics of a project, I can say that the assessment of these projects wold be rubrics that describe exactly what I am looking for and would have an analytic form. That is, the rubric would be on a continuum that would have specific criteria for each aspect of a portion of the project. The specific criteria would be helpful in performing the task and not contain any "unnecessarily negative language"

I believe these assessments  would help me to judge where my students are. I also believe that they are especially conducive to history classes. In writing this I was able to find an amazingly helpful article on this matter specifically. The article is from the Serve Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and is called, "How to Assess Student Performance in History: Going Beyond Multiple-Choice Tests."