How Teachers Can Ensure Skillful Learning

Critical thinking, collaboration and communication. These are the 3 Cs that need your help so your child can acquire, assimilate and reproduce information effectively. All these Cs are a result of their learning-enabled short-term memory. Encourage their short-term memory with creative activities to help children learn and understand better.

Critical thinking requires 'Left Brain' activity

Critical thinking is analysing a topic to better understand it. Teachers should teach kids to analyse a situation by breaking it into smaller, understandable parts.

Encourage your students to make logical arguments and support them with evidence. When youngsters converse this way, they'll learn the issue logically. This leads to a logical conclusion. Critical thinking helps kids’ problem-solve.

Kids discover possibilities through creativity

'Right Brain' creativity. Teachers can teach their students to learn creative thinking through several focused exercises. Brainstorming helps students come up with feasible, impossible, and ridiculous alternatives for a scenario. Less is more. According to this proverb, by giving students various materials to make a product, they'll discover diverse methods.

Encourage kids to tell jokes, tell stories and sing their favourite songs to foster creativity. Engaging children in a conversation about any topic can bring out their creativity and help them learn in new ways. Encourage children to ask questions to learn new things.

Verbal and written communication skills help students learn

Communication is communicating your thoughts and opinions through words, gestures and visual aids. Teachers must build a communicative school environment. Encouraged to communicate, kids learn to listen. When you communicate often, they'll listen carefully. They'll take notes while asking for unknown facts.

Collaboration

Introduce them to group activities with a similar goal to increase their learning skills. Collaborations can teach students the value of goal-setting. Kids will assess numerous options to attain their goals. They’ll choose solutions that help them achieve their goal and reject others. Such activities can create fledgling leadership traits. Group activities help kids learn time and resource management. Such acts help kids to resolve problems amicably and introduce them to team dynamics.

Simulating success

Encourage students to visualise what they hear or read. The next step is to prompt him/her to draw the picture that they imagined. Through repeated sessions, the child will be able to verbally describe an image without using pen and paper.

Instructional power

Parents and teachers of young children must properly explain what to do and how to do it. A clear, calm tone is best for training children.

Parents and teachers should watch the instructions' wording. Simple language and brief sentences help child relate to the work. Step-by-step instructions assist kids to learn a procedure. Your child can organise themself with these phased-out instructions.

Feedback's importance

Kids often crave elders' approval. They expect parents and teachers to judge them on every task they complete. Constructive feedback can help your child solve problems. When you praise your child's good behaviour, it boosts his/her self-esteem. This helps children create a self-confident, self-respectful personality.

Memory-enhancing games

Internet puzzles and games can increase memory. Introducing students to such games will sharpen their attentiveness and help them understand different solutions. Students will learn to incorporate all the puzzle's conditions to get the right answer.

All of the above-mentioned tactics help the students improve their thinking and concentration. When these two skills are developed, youngsters may assimilate and analyse information from many sources to learn and unlearn concepts. These learning strategies will help the students thrive in a changing and competitive culture.

Pankaj Kumar Singh.

Guest Author The author is MD, Cambridge Montessori Preschool and Daycare Private Limited