Identifying Similarities and Differences, Homework and Practice, and Generating and Testing Hypotheses

This week, we discussed how students learning can be impacted by: Identifying Similarities and Differences, Homework and Practice, as well as Generating and Testing Hypotheses. The effects of these ideas can usually be witnessed in the classroom setting.  In many cases, depending on how each of these ideas is implemented, each can be a positive or negative influence on a students education.

 Identifying Similarities and Differences
   Students have been proven to learn better when they are able to connect new information with prior information.  This can be useful even if students do not have prior knowledge.  If parallels can be drawn from the similarities and differences of the new material and related to the similarities and differences of things that students already do know their ability to learn new material is still enhanced.

 Homework and Practice
   Homework and practice can enhance the ability of students to learn new material.  However, if homework and/or practice is done without students knowing exactly what is supposed to be learned or practiced and why they should learn it, most of the possible positive effects of homework and practice can be lost.    


Generating and Testing Hypotheses
     This is something that happens in my science classroom on a daily basis.  Science is all about attempting to explain the world around us.  To do this, my students need to be able to research a topic, and then use the background knowledge they gained to make their best guess at explaining why things are the way they are.  We then use experimentation of some sort in order to then test to see if their hypotheses are supported or not supported by the data they collect from their experimentation.  People generate and test their hypotheses every day.  This can be seen in the morning when someone sleepily hypothesizes that they are able to hit the snooze button "just one more time" and still get to work or school on time.  If they are able to get to where they need to go, they have proven their hypothesis.  If not, they have disproven it.  The fact that people hypothesize all the time, and do not realize it, makes the process of teaching how to hypothesize relatively easy if the connection is made to prior experiences of the students.




One of the last things that we have had to do in CEDO 525 was to apply some of the learning strategies that we have been learning about to an online lesson.  I chose to use the online lesson from Learner.org's Interactives regarding the Dynamic Earth.   My full thoughts can be found using this link.  However, I found that overall, this is a useful site that would allow students to be able to get nonverbal instruction in the composition of the Earth and some of the major geological systems.  When I get to the geology section in my class, I am planning on using this as part of the review of the materials.