Dr. Yeap brought out a teaching concept when teaching children new ideas. This intrigued me as it became more obvious to me as I thought about the way I teach.
To teach ideas and concepts in this order:
1. Model
2. Scaffold
3. Provide
4. Explanation
Like many teachers, I often just stick to using modeling and scaffolding. In the regular classroom that I was taught in, I was never provided with much explanation in the use of certain ideas and concepts. Which I subconsciously did not see the need to explain much to the students that I teach. As I thought about it, I think I would like to give it a try to work on a little bit of explanation when teaching mathematical concept and link it with some form of daily usage so that my students can learn meaningfully too.
With this, Dr. Yeap also brought out Bruner's Theory of teaching using concrete materials, to visuals and then to more abstract ones. He demonstrated and gave us concrete materials such as cards to solve problems.
Personally, I find it a struggle to keep using concrete materials. This is because it is always easier to prepare visuals such as searching online, printing and laminating. Whereas if I were to have more concrete materials, I would require plenty of storage space and need to know where exactly to source for such concrete materials. At times, concrete learning may also cost more. However, I definitely agree that concrete learning must take place especially in young children's learning. Only after the children grasp the ideas, teachers should then move on to more abstract teaching.
As we move on to tackle more head-racking problems in the next few days, I am making it a point to create opportunities for more experiential learning with concrete materials so that my students can learn meaningfully :)
Build the ground, lay the foundation.
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