So far on this mini-series of dealing with school work, we have covered organizing your child’s materials and time. Next was getting in the zone and developing the proper mindset. Now finally we deal with the actual teaching approaches. No matter how much I would love to share a silver bullet that works 100% of the time with all kids, I can’t. It doesn’t exist. From speaking with other teachers and my own experience is first to know the material.
The Material:
Aside from actually knowing the material yourself, the big item is to know what type of material you are trying to teach. Problem comes in two main types: memory and logic. Memory problems are just retaining facts. For example the definition of nouns.. A group of people a long time ago decided that’s what a noun is a person, place or thing. Now everyone follows it. There is no reason for it, it just is. Logic on the other hand is taking facts you memorized to build and manipulate them to solve problems. Let’s take writing a sentence for example. You need to memorize the concept of what are verbs, nouns, adjectives etc. However, learning to put them together to express ideas that’s a logic problem.
Memory Problem Approaches:
Honestly, memory problems make me think of history class and forcing myself to remember dates and facts. It was boring, tedious and I hated it. To be frank, I pretty much forgot everything my history teacher told me. So why did my history teacher fail? Simple, he did not use repetition and make it unique. Repetition is simply doing something so many times that you can’t forget it even if you wanted. This is usually done with a lot of practice. Now how do we make something unique? There are tons of different options we have to use.
- Acronym
- Telling a story
- Relating it to a topic a child’s interest.
Acronyms are fairly straight forward. A good example would be BEDMAS (Bracket, exponent, division, multiplication, addition subtraction). With one word I am able to remember the order of operations for basic math problems. Instead of having to remember the order of 6 operations your child only has to remember 1 word.
My personal favorite is turning facts into a story. My history teacher gave us lots of dates and names of people and things they did. But he showed us all of this in separate small lessons. It was disjointed and did not flow together. This basically meant I have to learn tons of small little facts which were very forgettable. The human mind is designed to remember stories. Think of your favorite movie. Even if it’s been years since you have seen it you remember the plot. Why? Because it’s a story that you can follow along. It takes a bunch of small facts and turns it into one plot you need to remember.
The last trick you can use is relating the study topic to something your child interests. Say you are trying to teach physics and your child loves watching marvel movies. Relate things back to the movie. For instance, trying to teach about aerodynamics, try using examples use Tony Stark’s iron man suit.
Logic Problem Approaches:
Where memory problems are focused around retaining facts, Logic problems are focused around using tools to solve problems. There are 3 main tasks in dealing with logic problems.
- Understand the problem
- Finding your tools
- Playing with your tools
Now remember back to part 1 of this mini-series where we talked about getting organized. This is where that pays off. Look at the homework and ask where have I seen similar problems? Is talked about in your notes? Do you have quizzes or tests that have similar questions? Maybe I can find it in old homework assignments? Grab all the stuff from your expertly organized school binder or online folders and let’s jump in.
Understanding the problem:
Understanding a problem is not just knowing what is the question asking for, but also what form the answer should take. Answers can take many forms from simple one word/number to multi-page essays. Asking the teacher, referring to your notes, looking at past exams/tests or your textbook are excellent places to find what answer formats works with which of your problems.
Finding your tools:
So what exactly are your tools? Well depends on the problem. If it’s a math problem, tools can be different types of equations, English tools can be literary devices or anecdotes, science tools might be concepts of fundamental forces. First step finding all the relevant tools. Your expertly organized binder or online folder comes into play again. If you are doing a physics problem from Unit 3 Chapter 2 look at your notes/quizzes/homework cover that chapter. Make a list of all of the equations or concepts that were explained in that chapter.
Playing with tools:
How do we start playing with tools? I like to start with what are the components that make up each tool. For example if it’s a math equation that means understanding each individual term. Next is to figure out which problems require which tools to be solved. This comes with practicing and reviewing other similar problems. Next is to learn how to apply tools to problems. Again reviewing your textbook, talking to teachers and reading your notes are great ways to gain understanding of how to use each of your tools. Final step is to understand common ways tools are used incorrectly. This step is almost never taught in textbooks or in class but is probably one of the most powerful things to learn. There are not a lot of places to practice this skill. Asking the teacher what common mistakes past students have made and reviewing the mistakes that you have made on your past homework, quizzes and assignments are good starting places.
And with that we conclude our mini-series on dealing with schoolwork. I hope you will find these tips and tricks helpful with dealing with school. Please leave comments down below if you have additional helpful notes for dealing with school work.