Tag Archives: cognition/learning/understanding

A Swahili Saying on Wealth, Knowledge, and Money in the Bank

Posted on October 1, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Wealth, if you use it, comes to an end. Learning, if you use it, increases.”

Swahili saying

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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Term of Art: Code Switching

Posted on September 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

“code switching: Switching in speech between different languages, dialects, etc. E.g. two business associates meet and chat in one language; the meeting becomes formal and they switch to another. Often analyzed into subtypes, e.g. as occurring within sentences or at sentence boundaries. Sometimes distinguished from code mixing, or from borrowing; sometimes not.

The term ‘code’ is loosely used of any language or distinct variety of a language, whether or not it is actually thought of as a code (like the Morse code or a legal code) in any illuminating sense.”

Excerpted from: Marshall, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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John Dewey on Interest, Motivation, and Engagement

Posted on September 30, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Much assistance in the selection of appropriate material may be derived by considering the eagerness and closeness of observation that attend the following of a story or drama. Alertness of observation is at its height whenever there is plot interest. Why? The balanced combination of the old and the new, of the familiar and the unexpected…alternatives are suggested, but are left ambiguous, so that our whole being questions: What happened next? Which way did things turn out? When an individual is engaged in doing or making something, there is an analogous situation. Something is going to come of what is present, but just what is doubtful. The plot is unfolding toward success or failure, but just when or how is uncertain. Hence the keen and tense observation that attends construction. [Even] when the subject matter is of a more impersonal sort, the same principle of movement toward a denouement may apply. Mere change [in the experiences and situations] is not enough. The changes must (like the incidents of a well-arranged story or plot) take place in a certain cumulative order.”

John Dewey

How We Think: A Restatement of the Relation of Reflective Thinking to the Educative Process

Excerpted from: Wiggins, Grant, and Jay McTighe. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 1998.

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E.H. Gombrich on the Origins of Language

Posted on September 25, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Do you know what else these cavemen invented? Can’t you guess? They invented talking; they invented having real conversations with one another, using words. Of course animals also make noises—they can cry out when they feel pain and make warning calls when danger threatens, but they don’t have names for things as human beings do. And prehistoric people were the first creatures to do so. They invented something else that was wonderful too: pictures. Many of these can still be seen today, painted on the walls of caves. No painter alive today could do better. The animals they depict don’t exist anymore, they were painted so long ago. Elephants with long thick coats of hair and great, curving tusks—wooly mammoths—and other Ice Age animals.”

Excerpted from: Gombrich, E.H. Trans. Caroline Mustill. A Little History of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005.

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Four Very Basic Addition Worksheets

Posted on September 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

I’ve been assigned a math class this year. I’m not exactly well-suited to teach math; I struggled with it as a student, and really never made it past pre-algebra in high school. Nonetheless, I’m charged with teaching the subject. My students certainly deserve a better math teacher than I am–something I mention to them a couple of times a week.

In any case, here are four addition worksheets and their answer keys that I wrote for this class. There are a number of things I’m trying to assess with this preliminary work in the subject, one of the most important of which is any given student’s fund of working memory, a cognitive ability simply essential for math. You will see some problems repeat in different orders in an attempt to see if student recognize that they’ve seen the problem before. Also, using the same problem in different order gives students a chance to rehearse the commutative law of addition and teachers a chance to assess students’ understanding of this key concept in basic operations of mathematics.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Euripides on Learning and Youth

Posted on September 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead to the future.”

Euripides (480-406 B.C.)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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J.B. Sears on the Life of a Teacher II

Posted on September 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Systematic living. What is needed by teachers is the application of a bit of system and common sense in their daily lives. Teaching cannot be sedulously followed by young people without sedulously offsetting its inactivity with outside exercise and pleasure. Every teacher should set aside a definite time for exercise, and a definite sum of money of recreation and pleasure. A regular time for a walk, a tennis game, a horseback ride; and a regular monthly allowance for theater, opera, travel, of the entertaining of one’s friends, will take one out into the open air where acquaintance with nature may be renewed, furnish a host of new thrills, and establish new interests and new companionships, which will drive away care, renew one’s mental and physical vigor, and provide a saner perspective for the serious tasks of the days to come.”

Excerpted from: Sears, J.B. Classroom Organization and Control. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.

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J.B Sears on the Life of a Teacher I

Posted on September 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Intelligent living. As a matter of self-protection, to say nothing of the wisdom of living a joyous life, the teacher must look to the problem of keeping an adequate margin of good health. This is largely the problem of proper rest and recreation. It is such a simple truth to say that when one is tired and half sick most any sort of work becomes barren drudgery, and yet this explanation is rarely thought of by the teacher who retires in disgust after a long evening spent in the useless task of correcting papers.”

Excerpted from: Sears, J.B. Classroom Organization and Control. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918.

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Term of Art: Acculturation

Posted on September 17, 2019 | Leave a comment

“acculturation: The adoption by one society of a trait or traits from another society. The term is usually employed in anthropological contexts, and considers the change from the point of view of the recipient society. cf DIFFUSION.”

Excerpted from: Bray, Warwick, and David Trump. The Penguin Dictionary of Archaeology. New York: Penguin, 1984.

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Term of Art: Dyscalculia

Posted on September 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

“Dyscalculia: Impairment of the ability to do arithmetic.

[From Greek dys– bad or abnormal + Latin calculare to count, from calculus diminutive of calx a stone + ia indicating a condition or quality]”

Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

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