By: Megan Prats

11/18/2014

Advancement in learning has a lot to do with mental coordination as solving more difficult problems requires the student to understand basic concepts all at once. When a student understands the different layers of coordination, she can execute them at the same time seamlessly. So, when a student struggles because of a lack of coordination, it is imperative that you identify which layers of coordination are problematic, isolate them, improve them, and then put them back together with the others to focus on problems that require higher levels of coordination.

A clear example to illustrate a student who lacks coordination is one of my students who has struggled with reading comprehension in English. This student cannot extract the meaning of the text because the student struggles to understand the text itself. Particularly, the student has an insufficient vocabulary base, understanding of grammar, and phonetics to read in English with fluency. Because these more basic levels of coordination are weak, there is no surprise that when he’s asked to execute them all at once, he cannot do it because his mind is distracted with specific layers so he can’t see the whole picture.

Thus, for this student to see progress, I first isolated those basic building blocks that were not constructed concretely in his mind, and began working on them individually. Thus, for vocabulary development, we studied the dictionary, how to find words in the dictionary efficiently, and how to understand the definition of the word once you’ve read it. For the grammar issues, we created a punctuation table which detailed common punctuations in writing and what they mean. Also, as a hybrid of grammar and vocabulary development, we discussed parts of speech of words, what parts of speech are listed in the dictionary, and how to utilize those parts of speech. For the phonetics, we reviewed the alphabet and the sound that each letter of the alphabet makes. We only touched on the more complex phonetic rules briefly.

Now, for this particular student, his lack of coordination is due to a multitude of factors thus before he can start working on reading comprehension, he needs to improve his weaknesses to the point where he can solve basic problems instantly. When a student can solve basic problems instantly, the student understands the concept well enough to allow the thought process to reside in the subconscious mind more so than the conscious one. Because the subconscious occupies the student’s though process for the basic questions, the student’s conscious mind can focus on more complex problems like extracting the message from the text. Thus, the ultimate goal is to improve an uncoordinated student’s abilities to understand the more basic layers to the point where the though process moves into the subconscious before putting all of the layers together to allow the conscious mind to focus on a more coordinated task.

When the student is ready to move onto more coordinated problems is something that is not set in stone. Sometimes, you can advance to more complex problems even though the student continues to struggle with more simple aspects of the concept. Advancement in this case allows the student to see how those basic parts interact with others which, can help the student understand the basic parts more profoundly. So, like almost all things with the 2learn® Method, use your critical thinking skills to assess when the student is ready to do more coordinated tasks.

In conclusion, for uncoordinated students, the process to improve their coordination is to identify which layers of coordination are problematic, isolate them, improve them, and then put them back together with the others to focus on problems that require higher levels of coordination. How and when you put them back together is up to your best judgment and your critical thinking skills as a 2learn® teacher but in general, once the basic components move into the subconscious mind, the students are ready to tackle problems that require more coordination.

© Megan Prats 2014