Abstract & bibliography

http://pleasantcapstone.weebly.com- Link to my capstone


Tyanna Pleasant


Ms.Menasion


Mr.Ameen, Sayre Morris Recreation Center


Topic Summary:

The goal of this project was to develop skills that best helps elementary school aged children study better.


Project Abstract:

My capstone is designed to help children in my community better their academic skills and for me to gain teaching experience. I always loved children since elementary school, and I love to see them academically improving themselves and they progress to the next grade and eventually get to where I am. The best people to influence these young children are teenagers, because we are not too far from them in age, and we are not bossy and intimidating to them as adults are. This gave me the idea of helping children develop the skills that I had as an elementary school child. During this process I learned that each child has a different way of better understanding material. So I decided to create a test with english and math questions on it to give to them. The children who did not do so well were the children that I will focus my project on. I helped them study using the methods I came up with that best work for children and practiced it on them. To help guide me, I studied a psychologist named Jean Piaget, who came up with a theory on cognitive learning. I gave them the test again and who ever passed showed me that my methods and how I taught them worked. This capstone has given me a better understanding of cognitive learning and efficient way to teach something to a child and make it stick.


  • Ashman, A. F., and Robert N. F. Conway. An Introduction To Cognitive Education : Theory And Applications. London: Routledge, 2002. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 29 Jan. 2014.


This ebook is a source I found on EBSCO. Its about cognitive education by Adrian Ashman and Robert Conway. I read the section about memory and learned that in order to best understand the way cognitive development is learned, you must understand memory and how the brain allows people to learn. Without memory a person cannot learn “... if there is no memory, there can be no learning and without learning memory is an empty storehouse.” It also shows diagrams of how memory works by comparing it to holograms. This is different than my other sources because it is a book written by two professors of a psychology field and it is about memory while the other sources are about Jean Piaget and his theory. I believe the goal of this source is to help others learn more about cognitive development and to help parents and teachers understand how to help their children and others when teaching them something new. This source was very helpful to me, it made me think deeper into my capstone project. Especially when developing my tips for the children. I know more about memory and how to enhance a person’s learning ability. It hasn’t really changed much about what I think of my project. It made me think deeper into what i'm really trying to accomplish which is making effective study skills for elementary school aged children.



This site is about Piaget’s cognitive stages of development. It goes more into details about what each stage of his theory says. It also says that Piaget acknowledged the children who did not go through this process accordingly because of other mental problems. The ages he has for each stage is the average ages of children he tested. I do think that this is a useful source, because it is not a blog, or a made up website. I think that website is reliable because it has who its by and when I search it the same information this website did. This website is different than the other I used because it elaborate more on the theory and what exactly does each stage of his theory is about. I think that it achieved its goal of informing others on Piaget’s theory. This information helped me think about how I am going to structure the test and teach the children my tips for better studying. Should I teach them visually, by writing on the board, or tell them something and make them repeat it?



This website helped me better understand how to write an annotated bibliography. It has a lot of information on grammar questions, annotations, bibliographies, and many other issues or questions someone may have about english, or things you should know how to do when writing a paper. It teaches students to split it up into three categories summary, assess, and reflection. Each section has guided questions based on what the section is about. This site is very reliable, a lot of schools and teachers recommend it and they use it to show their students. I think that this source is objective, it is educational and explains the correct way to write papers and other help other with grammar issues. This source helped me write my annotated bibliography. I answered most of the questions in each section as it pertain to each source in all of my annotations.



This video is about a psychologist who focuses on motivation and young children. This video explains her theory, that when you congratulate children on their success they will be more motivated to do it again and move on to harder challenges. When you do not congratulate them, they will either want to try it again or stick with what is easier for them. She studies the correct way to congratulate children because the way you congratulate them could have a positive effect or a negative effect on them. This source is useful because it gives me a visual explanation of who she is and what she does. It tells all about her theory and how she came to them from the tests she did. It helped me think more about how to keep the children motivated and wanted to learn more in order to keep them interested in what I am showing them. I learned the proper way to congratulate a child when they have done something right to make them want to do it again or move on to something harder.



This website was about the different theories made by psychologists about child development. It has the different theories and who they are by plus a link at the end about the theorist. This website helped me determine which theory I wanted to focus on because focusing on just child development was too broad. After reading the theory made by Jean Piaget, about cognitive learning, I became more interested and wanted to know more. I do think that this source is reliable because it is not opinionated. The goal of this source was to inform others on the different categories of child development and the theories that famous psychologists came up with that are also being used. This was helpful to me, it helped me determine what I wanted to do my capstone project on.



This website talks about what cognitive learning is and how do we learn. We learn cognitive by experience something, processing it, and remembering it. This source is based on something that I must know in order to complete by capstone. I think that I should know what cognitive learning is, and this website gave me a lot of information about it. I think that it is reliable because it isn’t made of others opinions, and it has facts that I can look up and confirm. This fits into my capstone by allowing me to have the ability to better explain what cognitive learning is. I will be able to inform others about how memory is a big part of cognitive learning, and it enables us to communicate with each other, and understand what others are talking about.


This video is a documentary about Jean Piaget and he theory. It shows actual clips of him testing his theories on children of different ages, from infants to teenagers. It gives an overview of his life from when he was a young child till his death. This is reliable because the man who made the video knew him personally, and he had actual evidence of Piaget working on his theory. I think the goal of this source was to inform an audience on who Jean Piaget was, and to show how his theory came to be. This source helped me in my capstone by better understanding his theory so that I could give the audience more about him and have the ability to answer any questions about how he came up with his theory and what made him interested in it.

This website is about what a student teacher learned while teaching at an elementary school. I will use these eight skills she learned when teaching the children at Sayre. It says that each student is different and they each have different potential. As a teacher you must push them to do the best they can. This source is credible because I know where and who the information is coming from, it also has other link to topics similar to it and it is coming from a personal experience. I will use this in my capstone by have a slide that will include how to explain things to some students and to remind my audience that each child is different and they do not think in the same way the teacher does so things may seem harder to them than they actually are. This source was very useful when learning how to make connections with the students to get them to better cooperate.



This website is about mindset and how Carol Dweck tested her theory with blocks. It introduces what a “fixed” mindset and a “growth mindset” is. Also how “gifted” children could avoid challenges because they are afraid of losing their status. This is a great source, it goes into more detail about Carol Dweck’s theory. It gave me more of an open mind about what else I should know when doing my capstone. This is different than the other sources in my bibliography because it is based on the mindset of humans. Also it talks about how the environment and the way a child is treated while growing up either gives them a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. This fits into my capstone by allowing me to better explain to other what is the difference between telling a child good feedback that will allow them to have a growth mindset, and feedback that will leave a child with their fixed mindset. It helped me think about how I should refrain the praises I say when they get something right or understand what I am teaching them.


This website is a biography of Jean Piaget, and it explains every theory he ever had, about developmental psychology each of them based on cognitive child development, detailed observational studies of cognition in children, and a series of simple but ingenious tests to reveal different cognitive abilities. It also informs us that before Piaget’s theory, children were just people with less sense and ability. No one really thought about how and why children act the way they did. Piaget showed that children have a completely different mindset than adults. This source was very useful, it also helped me realize that children really do not think the way adults do, which makes me start thinking about the brian development of children. I think I should further my research and look at the brain of children and adults and compare them.


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