1.2 Understand how students learn

Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of research into how students learn and implications for teaching.

To understand how students learn is both an incredibly simple and complex thing. At the core of understanding student learning is to understand that students are people and have the same needs that all people have. An excellent example of this is Maslow's hierachy of needs. 

Maslow tells us that we have a pyramid of needs that starts at the base with Physiological factors; air, water, food, shelter, sleep and clothing. In many of today's classrooms there are students that do not have these needs meet and I believe that we will never be able to teach them until these core issues are addressed. 

Moving beyond this the third level of Love and Belonging is a core need that we can easily address in our classroom by createing a sense of place and allowing our students to feel welcome and that the classroom is their space to be. I plan to use a number of stratergies such as working with students to establish classroom expectations, create a comfortable and familiar environment through the use of reading corners and furntiture choices and ultmelty through taking the time to get to know students.