Alright I know it has been a few days since I last blogged a post. Been rushing my readings and figuring out ways to create the programme as well as as lesson plans for writing workshop. It’s scary to be honest. Designing something that works while at the same time feeling scared that others would reject it. But I’ve got to bear through it and know my stuff well so I can explain it to others.
This chapter talks about varying the practice. Realize your subject content and break it down into the different type of essential knowledge and skills. Then practice them while spacing them out. A lot of people, including test subjects to the experiments, will feel that interleaving is not productive. The main reason behind this is we are so used to massed practice or cramming a certain knowledge till we believe that we remember it while moving on to another.
But we all know that when it comes to real life or exams, the situations do not expect you to know the contents separately. In fact, it is often varied in content and tests the student on multiple levels of cognitive ability. I actually have a personal theory. The more the subject feels like it isn’t working, the more that the learning will take place.
The chapter goes on to talk about creating a durable form of learning. There is an increased effort to remember the learning after forgetting has taken place and this contributes to the strengthening of the memory.
Interleaving is actually the nature of how learning is done naturally in humans. It’s called learning from experience.
Learning from experience, however, requires something very crucial: reflection and elaboration. Reflection involves asking questions like “What happened?”, “What did I do?”, “How did it work out?” while elaboration involves asking questions like “What would I do differently next time?” which can be applied to the higher order skills like writing and comprehension questions.
I was thinking that if the teachers asked for research examples, I could possibly compile it. But I think the teacher experience above should suffice since they themselves should have gone through it.
At first I had a worry of what if the teachers wanted to have a control, to compare results. But I think that would be unnecessary.
I can foresee that teachers would feel that this type of instruction would feel very sluggish. But I think I can propose to them the following idea.
How do teachers learn and master class management? First they learn the strategies, but they can’t really practice it until the class or some of the students misbehaves. But we all know that doesn’t take too long. And when it does happen, we have to recall the strategies that we learnt. As a teacher who just left the stage of beginning teacher, I can tell you that the first time was not easy. I tried to recall and the forgetting was impeding the recollection. The nature of misbehaviour in class is normally repetitive until the teacher affirms and regulates a routine. And we accept, despite feeling frustrated and confused, that the routines cannot happen overnight. It takes time for the students and yourself to remember the routine and how to react to the smaller issues when it happens.
The Million In My Head 