Some Great Teaching



Photo credit: shareski via Foter.com / CC BY-NC

With great teaching, one does never get tired of observing the details...in a class plan of an adaptive expert teacher, i.e., a GREAT teacher (Hattie, 2012; Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014), it is clear for all to see the pre, while and post teaching steps that have been carefully crafted for each stage. After all, "great teaching leaves nothing to chance" (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014)

It is really adamant that we, teachers, consider where our students are (their previous knowledge), how to assess that (diagnostic tools), where we want the class to go (objectives) and how to convey that to students (success criteria). After that, there needs to be a structured guidance so that students know what is expected of them, what they need to 'grab' along the way to perform the task and who they can count on every step of the way.

This stability in the face of change provides students with a framework that releases their creativity and cognitive flexibility to think outside the box and look for insights into the content. That is high level thinking and it demands a lot of cognitive resources that would not be at their disposal if the context for it to happen were not carefully planned by the teacher.

How do you secure your students the reserve they need to be able to really learn?

References

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. Routledge.
Tokuhama-Espinosa, T. (2014). Making Classrooms Better: 50 Practical applications of Mind, Brain and Education Science. New York: NY. Norton & Company

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Memorizing what you want to learn

Image
How to better memorize what you want to learn? Photo credit: Foter.com I subscribe to what William James once said “It is our attitude at the beginning of a task which, more than anything else, will determine its outcome.”  But positive attitude cannot counteract the substantive small amount of short term memory we have (Miller, 1956). So, I respect my cognitive load (De Jong, 2010) and take the time I need to absorb the material given. I explore it in my own time (be it more or less than the average) by breaking the content into small, manageable chunks that I can better manipulate in my working memory while I strengthen, through revision and repetition, the synapses I already had or create new ones that encode new memories (Vanderbilt, 2014). Once content is in my ‘hands’ I apply different strategies: cognitive, memory, compensation, communication, metacognitive, affective and social (Oxford and Crookall, 1989). Moreover, I do lots of testing: quizzes, retelling,...
Read more

Learning about Toxic Stress - a personal account

Image
Photo by Suzer Jones on Foter.com / CC BY-NC   During a period of almost a decade I had the opportunity to learn about toxic stress on a personal level. Not that it had me as a target, my stress levels have always remained at the tolerable threshold, and that has made me very appreciative for the wealth of opportunities I had been granted since inception. What I am about to describe took place while I worked voluntarily as a teacher of English to many groups of very low SES students from 10 to 18 years of age who were part of an NGO (non-governmental office) that catered to their various – and multiple – needs in tandem with their regular schooling (when that happened). The case in point is about a girl, let’s call her Luisa, about 11 years old but very much underdeveloped physically and cognitively for her age bracket. Luisa was one among five siblings who lived miserably in a slum located in the south zone of São Paulo, Brazil. She had no sanitation, nor regular electr...
Read more

The importance of clarity and goals for learning

Image
This article first appeared at  JALT Mind, Brain, and Education SIG, Volume 5, Issue 1 (ISSN: 2434-1002) Photo by matthiaswerner on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA   There is one valuable idea in educational neuroscience that has changed my thinking: the brain cannot not learn , but it changed me in a way you might not expect. When we read that the brain cannot not learn, those of us that have no knowledge about how the brain really works might think it easy for the brain to harness untapped potentials that make becoming a genius, or a recognized expert, within easy reach for all of us.   However, that is not true. That is precisely why we must start digging for more knowledge about our neurological processes that promote learning because believing without knowing is akin to preaching without doing and, in both cases, the result is doomed to be disastrous (Kahneman, 2002). Let us start by examining the fact that the brain cannot not learn. This, by the way, is a...
Read more