Monday, February 9, 2015

For the most effective learning habits… ask a brick mason!

Middle school is the time when most students figure out they don’t know how to study and even more importantly, they don’t know how to store larger and larger amounts of information. 

Curriculum in elementary school primarily consists of two types; sequential skill building (as in ELA and math) and discreet units of study (as in Social Studies and Science).  When students enter Middle School a third type of learning, long-term information assimilation and synthesis, is introduced.  Students who are really strong memorizers often need help becoming successful when this latter type of learning is crucial.

Consider John, who has an amazing memory, and who through elementary school, when his science and social studies units are only a few weeks long, is able to soar through his assessments with high scores.  Next consider Sally, who seemingly learns more slowly, more deliberately, and who has to have facts ‘make sense’ in order to be able to recall them.  Sally does well in elementary school but not quite as well as John.  John and his parents naturally assume that when he gets to middle school he will continue to distinguish himself.  This is true for the first few months of the year, but as time goes on, John’s scores decline and his frustration increases. 

Sally, on the other hand, continues to roll along actually getting stronger as the year progresses. 

What’s going on?
The best analogy that describes the difference between John and Sally is a comparison of two brick masons.  The first is rather unprofessional and only builds walls that are three courses (levels) high.   His courses are uneven and poorly laid but because he never builds them very high, his walls suffice. The second is a master craftsman who builds walls that support buildings.  He builds more slowly, ensuring that each course is perfectly laid to serve as a strong foundation for the next.  His joints distribute the load of the bricks above evenly and his mortar beds are exact due to his use of a level to ensure perfection.  When the first mason, whose foundations are weak, tries to build a larger wall, it quickly crumbles. 


John is like the mason who builds weak walls because of his weak foundations.  John tries to simply memorize all information like a set of flash cards, ‘putting away’ information as unrelated facts.  When the number of facts John needs to know is small (like the low walls of the weak brick mason) his deficiency is hard to see.  Sally, on the other hand, ensures that every piece of information that she puts away is connected to other pieces of information.  She seeks and creates understanding between facts and understands how they interplay conceptually.  Sally, understands for example, why density is a foundational concept of both weather and of plate tectonics.  She understands that both processes are driven by density gradients, while John, conversely, never makes this connection.

The good news for John is that his teachers recognize this.  The bad news for John is that he does not!  With many students like John, they are resistant to creating meaning like Sally as they are learning, until they experience failure.  (For more about the psychology of this resistance read Carol Dweck’s book about Mindset) When John finally sees the error of his ways, usually long after a teacher or parent has tried to show him, he begins to accept and try things differently.

What should a parent do in this equation?
Because every student is different it’s important for parents to realize that the time in a child’s life when he finally hits his wall (when he can no longer rely upon memorization to succeed in conceptually dense subjects like Social Studies and Science) can be different for each student.  For some it happens in 6th grade while for others it’s not until 10th grade. 

The two things to be on the lookout for are a decline in performance, like John’s, and opportunities to explain these different types of learning to children when they arise.  These teachable moments can be used to develop both types of learning and to hopefully prevent ‘hitting any walls.’

As we enter the third quarter of the year teachers will naturally make connections between concepts taught now and those taught earlier in the year.  The BEST thing parents can do is learn along with your child. Have them simply review what they are learning and ask them questions where it seems like their concepts are disconnected.

An Example:
I was talking with a student in Biology and asking her about gene replacement therapy.  She explained that gene replacement therapy was a technique used to fix broken genes in people.  As an example she described how someone with diabetes could be cured by having his DNA fixed through gene replacement therapy.  Here is the rest of our conversation:
(Me) “Is this in use now?”
“Um, I think so.”
(Me) “How sure are you?”
“I’m not sure.”
(Me) “So I get the concept, but how does it work?”
“They fix your genes.”
(Me) “I get that but how do they do it?  Do they literally go in with really small tools and fix all one trillion cells in your body?”
“No they only fix the cells that need to be fixed.”
(Me) “But all of your cells have the same bad DNA, so how do they fix only some cells and not others.”
“I guess it’s like a medicine.”
(Me) “You mean you ingest in and it knows what cells to fix?”
“Yes.”
This is where I stopped the discussion.  There were major flaws in her understanding so I helped her to understand these.  In similar situations I have had this same student write down questions to go back to her teacher with, I have had her find basic articles online that explain the concept, and I have had her read aloud passages of a textbook that we both subsequently analyzed for meaning.  I happen to know a little about biology to help her, but we use these latter tactics frequently in subjects that I am not as knowledgeable about.

And so, like the deliberate brick mason, children often need to appreciate the purpose of being deliberate when crafting knowledge.  More importantly, they need to understand that memorization is a form of learning but it’s not a panacea that solves all needs. 

Lastly, as parents, the most important thing we can do in these situations is compel our children to seek the help of their teachers.  Learning how to study is a skill that we work on a great deal in our curriculum but because of the differences between students sometimes students need fix-up strategies.  It is in these times when spending as little as 5 minutes with a teacher (outside of class) can remedy the issue.

Now that we have begun our third quarter I encourage all of our students to become skilled brick masons of learning!


Mr. Klugman


End of Week Notes

Quote of the Week...
  • "The time is always right to do what is right."  Martin Luther King Jr. 
Middle School Report Cards
  • When any changes are made to report cards they are automatically re-posted to Aspen.
  • Last week some of our staff and parents discovered that (only) some classes had miscalculations in students' grade point averages.  These have been corrected and report cards re-posted.
For More about the Common Core Standards...
US Senate agrees that Climate Change is real in 98 to 1 Vote

Parents and students - Please be sure to check our announcements online for Important Dates related to Clubs and Extracurricular Activities 
Monday, Feb 9
  • Snow Day - No School
Tuesday, Feb 10
  • Late Buses
Wed, Feb 11
  • Late buses
Thurs, Feb 12
  • Late Buses
Fri, Feb 13
  • We will have FASS (Friday Support for Students (LMC 3:00 to 5:00))
  • Happy Friday
  • Enjoy Vacation! (No school next week)
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