This activity continues from the activity “How much did you learn, how much did you remember?” This activity has two aims. First it helps the children think back to a lesson from a day or two before and recall what they learned. Second it shows them that two people can experience the same thing but remember it in very different ways. It is part of what makes us all so different from each other. For this activity we need children to work together in pairs, making a learning chart, as described previously, and then looking at each other’s learning chart. Continue Reading
Primary
How much did you learn, how much did you remember?
Give each learning experience a mark. A core idea in these exercises is to give the children the sense that their learning is under their control. That what they know and the marks they get in tests are the direct result of how much effort they put in. Put another way, learning is not something that just happens to them but is something that they are actively engaged in – their actions determine how much they learn. To help give children this awareness children can be invited to give each piece of learning a mark out of 10. The mark Continue Reading
How to make teaching more efficient
If we wish to be more efficient in our teaching (which is to say, finding ways to teach more that will be remembered and be usable by the pupil in any period of time) one way forward is to follow the ideas of John Carroll whose view that virtually anyone could learn virtually anything presents us with an exciting challenge. Carroll focused on two important concepts: Different pupils need to be taught in different ways. Different children take different amounts of time to get to a set standard. The implication of this approach is that as teachers we should amass Continue Reading
Helping children remember what they have learned – 2
In the article Helping children remember what they have learned – 1 it was suggested that children can be encouraged to write down at the end of each day (or later, when they are used to this approach, at the start of the next day) what they learned in a particular lesson. Going on from this, it is possible to extend the activity by asking the children to give a mark for the lesson, explaining to them what each mark means. For example (and depending on the age and experience of the children) you might say they could give a Continue Reading
Helping children remember what they have learned – 1
By and large life in the primary school happens to children. They are told where to go, what to do, and taught how to do it. Of course they get to choose their own friends and (up to a point) what they do in the breaks between lessons, but otherwise their lives are directed. Which is why, quite often, when parents of primary school children ask their offspring what they did in school today the answer can be disappointing. However, it can be very helpful indeed if children are encouraged to think about and make notes about what they learned Continue Reading