Gearing up to teach

Gowri Iyer

Learning is natural and continuous. We are all learning all the time – the students, teachers, families, peers and communities. Learning is also a collaborative effort and an amazing journey. The journey becomes fulfilling when the driver takes you with a clear idea of the destination, explains the ups and downs of the route, represents the spirit of the journey, is excited about something new that comes up, encourages questions and clarifies doubts to the best of her knowledge. The driver’s seat has great power but with great power comes great responsibility.

The teacher (driver) needs to equip herself to deliver the learning experience. For this, she needs to strengthen her strategic planning and critical thinking, emotional learning, reviewing skills and motivational tactics.

With one teacher handling many children at different interest and skill levels, it becomes challenging to reach out to every child to ensure productivity and each child’s development. Hence this needs a lot of pre-planning and learning tools.

Here are seven tools to improve your learning skills to become a better teacher.

1. Spiralling – Spiralling in learning is when learners repeat the same topics over and over again with each encounter increasing in complexity and reinforcing previous learning.

   For instance, after students are taught to read, they are asked to read to learn new things. This is an example of spiral curriculum in reading – learning to read evolving into reading to learn. Teachers can make a lesson plan for a story, for a small age group, then use the same story but plan something more challenging for an older group of children.

   In mathematics too, we use spiralling – the progression from finger counting to simple additions, to tables and then to algebra.

2. Retrieval practice – Practice bringing information to the mind without the help of materials. The mind usually tricks us into believing that we remember what we have learnt. Space out your studying over time. You learn, forget and relearn. This helps in improving memory. For instance, you can go through and explain a topic to a friend, a pet or an inanimate object, without referring to the material used to learn. This makes it easier to retrieve that information later.
3. Elaboration – Explain and describe ideas that you have learnt in as great a detail as possible. But make it simple, clear and easy to communicate. Ask questions on the topics like When? Where? Why? What? to yourself and bring about a clear picture. This makes any topic comprehensible at any level.
4. Interleaving – Practice a skill but practice that using multiple other skills. Switch between ideas while you study. This involves working on multiple skills in parallel. The brain is forced to be alert and will lead to better retention. A simple example would be, if an art teacher wants to learn the painting styles of six painters, she can learn by going through the works of the painters in a different order and understand the necessary nuances.
5. Modelling – To explain using examples is modelling. Using concrete and specific examples to understand and explain even abstract ideas will help in getting the details right.

   For instance, if you want to explain what ‘freedom’ is to a child, you can blindfold the child and ask her to walk around. Then later she can be asked, “How was it to move around without the freedom to see?”

   You can explain an algebraic expression by assigning a character to each variable.

   Teachers can apply this strategy and then ask the students to come up with their own strategies. Their examples are proof of their understanding of the topic. Encourage students to continue this practice when they study.

6. Dual coding – If a text is accompanied by visual information and then explained in the learner’s own words, it becomes effective. Then she can create her own visual. This helps in reinforcements, observation and broadening perspectives – e.g., infographic, cartoon for a story, diagram, graphic organizer, timeline, etc.
7. Combination – Now you can combine these tools to sharpen your absorption skills and improve your learning abilities. You can space out your retrieval practices and when doing retrieval practice, try to recall concrete examples, elaborate, sketch out a concept, you can interleave between different concepts.

You can use all these techniques in different disciplines.

Explain to your students the strategies and terms when you use them. Learn and teach them how to learn!!

Source: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/learningstrategies/

The author is co-founder of Cilre, an educational organization, which makes learning fun, engaging, relevant and available. She is a professional storyteller and is passionate about working with kids. She facilitates and designs workshops for children and teachers. She can be reached at gowri@cilre.com.