Social Cognitivism

I modeled how to cut out a paper snowflake.

Attention: I told her “Today I’m going to teach you how to cut out one of those cool paper snowflakes. First I’ll show you how to fold the paper, then I’ll show you how to cut it out.” This helped to introduce curiosity about what it would look like at the end, and as I was showing her, I would direct her attention to new things I was doing by saying “Okay, look and I’ll show you how to fold the paper. First fold from here to here . . .” and so on.

Retention: I gave her a visual image to represent what I wanted her to do—I showed her how to fold and then cut the paper, and I had her do it with me, one step at a time.

Production: I had her cut out a second snowflake with me doing it at the same time again, giving her pointers to help her do it better. Then I had her do it again on her own while I watched her and gave her pointers.

Motivation and Reinforcement: The reason I gave her for doing this was that every kid likes to cut out paper snowflakes, so as a teacher or a mom, she will want to know how to do this to help her kids when they want to do it. To reinforce her, as she did each step with me, I would say “That’s good!” and then when the snowflake was done, we opened it up and it was beautiful, so it made her want to make another one and see how different it would look.