Frustration or Learning

So I thought about the fact that when you are teaching, the purpose is to expose the student to a new idea and have them create a mental image that is reusable in the future. This can be a seemingly frustrating process but should it be? Should you find yourself extremely frustrated when a student is not able to understand the ideas that you are conveying to them? Is this frustration natural? Of course but what I think is highly relevant here is that we are humans, and thus have the ability to fight our natural inclinations to produce more favorable outcomes for ourselves, we are not completely controlled by our basic instincts or natural inclinations. At least let us hope.

The next idea I have come to contemplate is should I alter my lesson to ensure that students are able to grasp all the ideas I want them to the first time it is presented. I believe most teachers are familiar with this you alter your lesson after the first class, or deliver a warning message telling students to not do this, or make sure to note that. However what I have started to consider is does that second group of students experience the same type of learning or quality of learning as the first that learned the hard way. Should all of your students have to struggle attempting to grasp the information, do the students become more aware of their own abilities to learn when they are allowed to make mistakes? Or do you save time and immediately attack all of the misconceptions that are usually present. I am starting to believe that allowing students to find the misconceptions, and make their own mistakes. Do these mistakes allow for the students to grasp a better understanding, learn how to learn, learn what strategies they need to learn. Well something to consider, allow students to learn, relive the frustration and allow each of the students to make mistakes, if you can manage it....but we all know that you can right??

Keep Learning, Keep Thinking, Keep Teaching,

Mr. Period

Helping Student's Remember Vocabulary

I thought of this particular technique while studying for the GRE myself. From my very limited knowledge of neuroscience and my more expansive observations of how students learn I know and you probably do to that students need to make association's in order to create usable memories. Therefore when having your students learn new vocabulary identify a short: 4 word or less definition and have them copy the definition and word. Now the most important part, have the students write down a few words that describe what thought their mind first thinks of when they think about the word and its definition. This seemingly would be the students strongest mental association to the idea most similar to the vocabulary word being considered. I know this method works for me and now its your turn, let me know what happens.

Good Luck Inspiring Thinking,

Mr. P Period