Government of the people, by the people, and for the people can become fixated on wielding governmental power and forget the rights of the people. History is replete with leaders who twisted their popularity into a personal pedestal of perceived power. That is when humble and correct teaching is required to remind the next generation of voters that the right to lead is a responsibility not a privilege and the first responsibility of leadership is to guarantee the freedoms that have defined our nation. Continue reading
Theory into Practice: Feedback Feeds Teaching and Learning
Feedback is part of a teacher’s total instructional design. Once a teacher launches a lesson, the teacher is not an impartial observer. As a shepherd herds sheep toward home, a teacher uses feedback to ensure that all children reach their learning destination successfully. Every child engaged in the process of a lesson can profit from a teacher’s feedback, not just the lost sheep. Some feedback causes a child to succeed in the lesson and other feedback causes a child to really succeed – all children can use a teacher’s good feedback. Continue reading
Theory into Practice: Blooming the Curriculum with One Word – “So…”
Learning is an additive like train cars on a railroad line running through a classroom. Each car arrives with facts and skills to be taught and learned before it leaves the classroom/station, and the next train car of facts and skills arrives. There is more truth in this analogy that teachers want to admit. We change this perception with one word – “so.” All a teacher needs to do to move teaching and learning from a linear to a geometric design is to ask “So, what can/will/should you …” and teaching and learning launch vertically from children waiting for the next lesson to children doing higher orders of cognition with what they have already learned. It is blooming wonderfully! Continue reading
Theory into Practice – Behaviorism is a Good Teaching Method Until It Is Not
Teaching for learning is a purposeful and intentional process. When a teacher considers and selects the best teaching method for obtaining a wanted educational outcome for children, the teacher is exercising high professional problem solving and decision making. We all fall into the trap of grabbing familiar tools for the work at hand. A hammer is a hammer, but it is not the best tool for tightening a screw or creating a policy for resolving world hunger. Behaviorism, like a hammer, is the right tool for a small set of learning goals. It becomes the wrong tool when applied to all learning goals. Choose teaching tools wisely and keep each tool sharp. Continue reading
Theory to Practice: Teach for Retention or Forget Teaching It. Your Students Will.
Remembering what a teacher said is a struggle between working memory and brain dumping. If there is not an overt effort to retain what is heard, seen, or perceived, the working brain will dump what was heard, seen, or perceived within 30 seconds. That is a fact. A teacher who wants children to remember what they have been taught must know and practice principles of retention theory. If not, teaching is a wind that blows through children’s minds leaving little that was learned. Continue reading