Children learn best when they don't realize they're being taught. Lead them right up to the conclusion, talk them all the way around it, but get them to pronounce it in their own words before you're done.
One of my jobs at camp was to mentor high-schoolers who wish to work with children in the future. I let them run some of the projects I had designed for the kids. Once I explained it to them I tried to give them slack reigns so I could see how they would choose to run the lesson. One common hang-up that I noticed was when they presented the activity to the children, they would give all the information at once, including the overall concept the activity was designed to teach. "By the end of this lesson you kids will be able to see..." I had to work on this with many of my high-schoolers. Just telling them once that this is not the best way to present the activity wasn't enough, they would continue to do their introductions this way. Possibly because this is the way I presented the activities to them. "See, this teaches the students [such] in [such and such a] way." I couldn't show them or tell them how to teach, they needed to learn to teach just as much as the students needed to learn.
Watching my high schoolers I really noticed the trap, and how easy it is to fall in: we can't get caught in the idea that we're giving students information. We all know we are super smart, but the kids will respond better and retain more if they learn to draw the conclusions themselves. If they feel empowered, it is something they will remember.
Watching my high schoolers I really noticed the trap, and how easy it is to fall in: we can't get caught in the idea that we're giving students information. We all know we are super smart, but the kids will respond better and retain more if they learn to draw the conclusions themselves. If they feel empowered, it is something they will remember.
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