Bible Students

Thoughts on “Strategies and Models for Teachers” by Eggen and Kauchak (chapter 6)

This week’s reading mainly covered the application of retaining knowledge. One of the biggest problems in the classroom is that students are not able to retain the information they learn. This can be for a whole number of factors. First, students may have a different cultural learning strategy, and so the learning strategy of the classroom may be foreign and difficult to understand for the student. For this kind of retainment, it is important that the student be heard by the teacher and that the teacher try to accommodate the student’s learning strategy. The best way, however, to bring students to understand what the concepts in the class are is to lead them naturally to their own conclusions about the topic.

The way to lead students to their own conclusions about topics is through asking questions. Asking pointed questions to the students is helpful for guiding them to the correct answer without giving them the information. When students have to form the connections on their own, they have a much higher chance of retaining the information. Once questions are asked and the students understand what the concept is, the teacher can use many functions to explain and sharpen the definition of the topic. 

First, the teacher is able to give examples and nonexamples to the students. Examples are helpful for sharpening the definition of a concept without necessarily telling exactly what the concept is. For example, the teacher can display two or three examples of a topic (e.g. a grammatical error) and ask the students to identify where the similarities are in the examples, in order to guide them to their own discovery about what the concept is. These examples are a great way to guide the student without telling them exactly what the concept is. 

Once the student has an understanding about the concept through examples given, the student should be given nonexamples as well. Now, there are nonexamples which do not help further sharpen the definition. For example, if the teacher is giving examples of a certain grammatical error, a nonexample of a square is not helpful for sharpening the definition of the concept. Obviously, a square does not help identify the grammatical error. However, using a confusing nonexample is helpful for identifying the restraints of the patterns learned for the concept. For example, if the teacher asks the students to identify proper uses of “I” in a sentence, and gives these examples: “I am the man in the photo,” and “Emma and I went to the store.” While these are both true examples, it demonstrates how using a confusing example with an additional rule may help to close in on the original rule of grammar. In this case, even though students likely would say “Me and Emma went to the store,” this contrasting example helps to show where the boundaries of the grammatical error are. 

Now, examples should be given much practice. There is no set amount of examples which is needed. Different students may need significantly more examples than others, and so the teacher should be prepared with more examples than they believe they will need. If the goal of the teacher is to teach the concept, then the teacher should not find any specific number of examples to be enough, but rather gauge their success based on the retainment of the students. 

Students, as they are guided to the solution through questions, should be asked to form a hypothesis on what they believe the similarities and dissimilarities are for the concept in question. When this is done, there should not be any strong rejection of a concept. In this way, the teacher allows for an open classroom for discussing ideas. When a student makes a hypothesis on what the connections are, they are forming the connection for themselves, which helps to ensure they will have a greater retainment of the material. When a teacher simply lectures them in order to give them the information, the hard work of synthesizing hypotheses about the concepts is given up, meaning the brain has not put as much work into forming the correct paths for understanding the concept in the future. 

Now, the younger the students, the more concrete the examples should be. Younger students are not able to think as abstractly as older students. Therefore, the younger students should be accommodated with less abstract examples, and more concrete ones. 

Now for classroom manners. Students must be able to respect the teacher if guided discovery is to be used. When there is guided discovery, attempts to ruin the discussion should be shut down quickly. Now, this does not need to be harsh, but it does need to be definitive. Turning the discussion to something unproductive should be quickly dealt with. 

Cultural minorities, especially when they are different minorities than the teachers, may have different reactions to different methods. This is, as mentioned earlier, because of an unfamiliarity to the dynamic of teaching. Additionally, some minorities may have stronger reactions to authorities, which may lead to a strongly negative reaction, especially when disciplined. It is important for the Christian teacher to remember that all people have to deal with the consequences of sin in some kind of fear, and that any minority who feels threatened by authority is not so different from the teacher or other majority students. The teacher should be willing to love the students through making a comfortable learning environment where the student is valued. If the point of teaching is to actually teach the material and honor God, then making a comfortable working and learning environment is needed. 

The teacher should be able to give examples never given before. These fresh examples help the students to form new connections, rather than depending on old examples. When the teacher is able to get them to identify new examples, the connections will be formed more strongly. In order to do this, the teacher can put new examples and nonexamples on a whiteboard, and have the students write down in two columns, on a piece of paper, where they think the examples are, and where the nonexamples are. 

The examples should be circled or underlined at the end of the process. The lessons should begin when the teacher presents the examples and nonexamples. In order to teach the students well, there should be visual affirmation of the concepts through underlining or highlighting the correct material. Further, the teacher should begin the class with an explanation in order to do the exercises for the rest of the class.