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
Content Knowledge, Pedagogy, and Empathy Are Equal Teaching Skill Sets
Research and experience tell us that the single most essential quality children of all ages look for in their teachers is genuine care combined with trust of them as children and learners. Teacher empathy drives the “why” students engage in our curricular and pedagogical improvement strategies. We will not improve the data-based results until we attend to the human-based inputs. Continue reading
If We Do Not Teach Children to Listen, Why Are We Talking to Them?
Every teacher is responsible teaching active learning. We fail when we believe that by middle school all children know how to be active listeners. Good listening skills must be taught and practiced in every grade and every subject for every child. Given all the noise in the world, it is too easy for any child, or adult, to slide into the noise Continue reading
The Curious Kick the Can of Facts into Possibilities
Education that does not evoke curiosity is telling the same stories over again in a daycare center to children who daydream with their eyes and ears closed. Continue reading