Burk Bosse

1/22/2015
Educational Psychology
Journal 2: Age-level characteristics
I want to teach 2nd grade. The characteristics are eager to learn, copying behavior, and
ready to play when its time to work, bright, energetic, and trusting. Some appropriate activities
would be short videos, reading, snack time, games. Teaching strategies would be surprises,
showing you care about them, making boring in-class assignments fun, and using the theories by
Erickson, Piaget, and Vygotsky for the age group. These men didnt go through school
themselves for nothing and learned a great deal about cognitive development, which is now
available to teachers in the classroom. Other teaching tools a teacher can use is computer time,
where the students can play interactive learning games, to support the teachers effort in the
teaching of math, reading, and vocabulary, which are so important as a foundation in learning
English. The students I observed in second grade, had a love for their teacher and were ready to
please, in fact when the teacher put on a short video about saying the pledge of allegiance the
class got up and started saying it along with the video. I could see Erickson, Piaget, and
Vygotsky at work in teachers classroom. I also saw the children copying other childrens
behavior. It seemed to me when one child started talking loudly the others would start also. I
noticed that I was not the only one that would/ did use the rules about voices The teacher would
say give me 5 and the children began to get quiet again. So, I believe teaching strategies not
only come from Erickson, Piaget, and Vygotsky, but also how the teacher relates to the students,

if poorly then the children try to take over the class, but if with authority and love the children
seem to know not to push it.