This week's study and discussions reminded me that not all of my students will be able to learn in the same way. I have to vary my teaching to accommodate the needs of my learners. In teaching history, I have to meet my children where they are, knowledge-wise, in my topic, assess what they need to know, and rebut what information they may have heard that was false, so I can build a plan to get them all to the final knowledge which is required by the curriculum. I learned that I have to reach students though implementation of teaching styles that correspond with their preferred learning styles. And I also learned that teaching the same way every time can get boring, and I might need to change up my classes to keep them interesting.
I also read that students tend to retain information at the beginning of class and at the end of class due to the primacy effect (former) and the latency effect (latter), so I should not be planning my lessons like a hamburger...fluff, then the meaty details, then more fluff, but more like a huge garden salad...meat and seeds and cheese and dressing on top of the green "fluff." If my kids get to dig into the meat of the lesson, while getting some fluff, they will retain more of the information they need. (Sorry about the burger analogy! Cooking burgers for Father's Day supper tomorrow night...just made sense!)
In my interactions with some discussions this week, I learned about VAKT, which I had been doing in my class, except for the tactile piece. I really think I will have my students construct a model of something as we learn about the history of a period (such as the Coliseum). I think that will help my tactile learners in a way that my visual, auditory, and kinesthetic teaching didn't always reach them.
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