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Showing posts from October, 2017

Novelty & Learning

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Photo credit: Steve took it via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA Our brains learn by contrasting what is new to what is known. It is the resulting factor that will account for a longer attentional focus and memory encoding that will lead to learning.  In considering this, the next challenge for a teacher is how to create novelty within the boundaries of some predictability so that kids feel safe to pay attention to the novel stimulus. Let me tell you a very successful example I had once the chance of video recording. In this class, 10 kids aged between 24 and 36 months were learning English as a second language. The teacher had for the class the objective of teaching hot and cold, concepts that they were already familiar with but that had to be attractive enough in the presentation stage so that they would feel motivated to use the content language (It’s hot/It feels hot or cold) in the second langue (English).  The teacher divided the room into two corners, prepared the set