Week 10

Learning... this isn't a one step process. Learning takes time. Students need more than one look at any topic they are taught. I can't expect my students to completely understand factoring the very first time I teach it to them. Luckily, students usually don't see a topic only once in their life. Going back to factoring, this topic is actually taught from late elementary until they finish their math classes in high school (and longer if they choose to continue taking math classes in college). At each level the students learn something different about the topic. In 5th or 6th grade they start learning about common factors, which continues through jr. high to encompass variables. Once they take algebra they start learning about factoring polynomials, and so on. At each step something extra is added in to make it just a little bit different, but the basic principle is the same.

As teachers we need to remind our students of their past learning experiences, so they know they aren't learning something for the first time. We need to help them make the connections between what they have learned up to the point we are teaching them. We can also give them problems where they have to use past knowledge that may help them figure out a the problem, but perhaps the key to solving the problem is for the student to recognize the one new difference. The key for teachers is to remember that we have tools and previous knowledge that we can use to help our students!