Lesson 6 is a short lecture on the three ingredients of the learning process – the psychological, physiological, and systematical. Not only do we, as educators, have to understand th learning process, but it is crucial to teach students how to learn. When you want to learn, believe that you can, can put yourself into a state of concentration and know how to learn and the best strategies to learn, well, then you are on your way. This is a good checklist for the class and for you as a teacher: How can I influence attitudes and motivation? How can I put the students in a focused state of mind? How can I explain how to learn the topic at hand?
Imagine if the students could do this as well – influence their attitudes, their psychological state or focus and understand strategies need to learn. That is the purpose of thinking in metacognitive terms – learning how to learn.
The lecture below explains more about the basics of learning. The lecture after is about in-depth learning.
Dylan had the basics down about the process of his learning. I think you’ll agree. Start to think about a couple of students or children that would be willing to have Learn Talks with you. Time to try it out!. The basic model should be clear by now.
- Establish rapport
- Ask about something they have learned and it is often good to start with something outside of school. Almost always the’ll come up with something. Remember it doesn’t have to be big. Actually tiny examples are sometimes better to work with and ask about.
- Listen and try to pick out some keywords or phrases that describe their HOW. Write them down and save them if you choose to make a Strength Star.
- Feed the keywords back and summarize what you’ve heard. Affirm their ability to learn and point out some of their strategies and strengths.
- Ask about something they would like to learn. Ask them about HOW and their strategies for doing that and maybe they will borrow from their first example. You could connect now to learning at school, but that is not necessary. Your role is to affirm their ability and give a boost, not necessarily to help them learn something they thing is hard or boring. That can happen, but that is a secondary result. You’re main option is to move towards self-efficacy, that feeling of being able to accomplish something when they want to, their confidence, in this case, of their ability to learn.
- Summarize again. You can also ask the student to briefly summarize.
- Thank them for the opportunity to talk about their learning.
