Clauses Discussion

Read the following vignette, then answer the questions below. Respond to at least one additional thread.

Four teachers want their students to understand the rule saying that non-essential clauses in sentences are set off by commas.

Janet Reeve displays six sentences on the overhead, three of which contain essential clauses and three others that contain non-essential clauses. She points out the clauses, correctly punctuates them, and explains why they are punctuated in this way. She then gives the students several sentences for practice, directing them to correctly punctuate the clauses in the sentences.

Steve Smith presents several sentences which contain essential clauses and other sentences that contain non-essential clauses. He directs the students to look for clauses in the sentences that have commas around them, and he guides them to conclude that the clauses set off by commas are not essential, whereas those that don’t have commas around them are essential. He then gives the students some additional sentences to punctuate correctly.

Javier Sanchez presents a paragraph which contains three underlined essential clauses and three other underlined non-essential clauses, each punctuated correctly. The class discusses the common features of the underlined and italicized clauses, and, with Javier’s guidance they arrive at a rule for punctuating essential and non-essential clauses. Javier then directs the students to write a paragraph containing at least three examples of essential clauses and three other examples of non-essential clauses, all punctuated correctly.

Susan Welna presents a passage in which several examples of essential and non-essential clauses are embedded. She asks the students to describe the passages, and after they have made several observations, she punctuates the sentences properly, explaining the rule in the process.

1. Which teacher in the vignette most nearly based his or her learning activity on the suggestions for classroom practice that are grounded in the principles of cognitive learning theory? Explain.

2. Which teacher in the vignette least nearly based his or her learning activity on the suggestions for classroom practice that are grounded in the principles of cognitive learning theory? Explain.

reply:

Hi everyone!

I believe the teacher that most nearly based their activity on the principles of cognitive learning was Janet Reeve. Janet did a good job by first visually showing out the clauses, then visually showing them the correct way to punctuate them, and then by verbally explaining why the sentences are punctuated correctly. She did not do all at once. Then by giving the children their own practice sentences help them repeat the process that was just learned.

And I believe teacher that least nearly based their activity on the principles of cognitive learning was Javier Sanchez . I was stuck between him and Steve but I do believe that Javier did not do a good job at going over each underlined clause in his paragraph. I also believe that by giving them the assignment to write a paragraph with 6 total examples while all being punctuated correctly is giving them to many tasks to do at once when they are supposed to be solely worried about understanding the rule that non-essential clauses are set off by commas. Overall I also felt that his explanation was just very complicated.