Chapter 6: Cognitive Theories of Learning: If You Give A Mouse A Cookie

Today in workshop, I was working on sequencing with my pull-out group. To work on the skill of sequencing rather than reading. I chose to have us read one of my all-time favorite books, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie, a substantially below grade level story, with great visuals. I previewed the lesson with the students, and told them that they would be asked to put events from the story in order. Then we listened to it twice on audio CD. As we read through the first time, I noticed most of the students sitting and listening quietly, but one of my students began to act out each thing the mouse did in the story, and mimic the accompanying sounds of each action. When we listened to it the second time, that student again acted out the story and made the sound effects. After listening to the story, each student was given sentence strips and asked to sequence 6 events from the story. The student who acted out the books as he listened to it and looked at the pictures was able to correctly sequence all the events, talking himself through, and quoting the text and making the sound effects to himself.

Cognitive learning theory has been very much on my mind these past few weeks. It was fantastic to watch one of my students, who routinely struggles with executive functioning tasks, develop his own strategy to remember information and to be able to use it.