By: Megan Prats
10/9/2015
Linear
Learning is cumulative to a certain extent. Thus, for the student to understand a concept normally there are foundational concepts that the student needs to understand first. For instance, in order for the student to understand 16th notes, she normally needs to understand time and then subdividing the time via 8th notes. So, when developing the student’s needs for the customized curriculum, your substance should follow a linear path. However, because the infinite realm of knowledge allows for the student to learn is so many places, the linear projection can be left behind at anytime.
I had a student who really struggled with subdividing the time via 8th notes. We spent weeks working on this skill and the student’s ADHD brain just didn’t allow him to focus on the metronome and subdividing at the same time (lack of coordination). Naturally, subdividing the time via 16th notes was difficult for him but once I determined that he wasn’t going to be able to subdivide the time without serious practice (which he never did), I had to deviate from the linear path and invest our time in other aspects of his drumming. Thus, we spent more time in the lessons devoted to areas of music that came more naturally to him – sound creation, composition. Because we shifted our focus, the student grew into a more well-rounded musician and enjoyed his lessons more. He was eventually able to compose a song which involved a wide variety of sounds and feels.
So the moral of the story is that if the student can’t get over step 1, maybe you should take the student elsewhere. Also, sometimes skipping a step and having the student tackle a more complicated area (i.e. step 3) will develop a better understanding of step 2 so that she’ll be able to tackle it.
I try to visualize the infinite realm of knowledge as a vast field. As the teacher, you tend to create linear paths through the field, depending upon the subject matter, for the student to traverse because in general, learning is cumulative. But, feel free to either skip some steps and go back or take the student on an entirely new path if she gets stuck on one of the steps. Sometimes, allowing the student to explore the problematic step in a different light allows the concept to click in her brain and thus she’ll be able to execute it.
But, when you are preparing for your lesson, you should prepare the substance in a more linear fashion. Thus, when teaching my students how to subdivide the time in time, we’d first cover time in music, measure construction, rhythmic notation, the metronome, and then playing the downbeat in time and finally subdividing the time. So, if you take a linear approach in organizing the concept but are prepared to throw the linear nature of learning outside the window if the situation calls for it, you’re on the right track.
This week I had a lesson with a new student who has never formally studied English. Thus, it was no surprise that after evaluating him, I realized that the substantive foundation upon which he’s built his English is rocky.
Even though substance isn’t the most important part of the problem-solving process (Critical thinking is!), if substance has been faulty laid, the student will have reoccurring issues solving problems in that discipline. For instance, because my new student’s English substance was laid in a piecemeal fashion, my student couldn’t see the connection between such fundamental linguistic information as the actor and the tense of the verb. And, because substance starts as a foundation and then grows in a layer upon layer fashion, when the bottom layers are faulty, it affects even the upper levels of substance. Thus, when you see a rocky substantive foundation in the student, normally the best place to start is square one.
For example, with the aforementioned student, we spent some time in the lesson understanding the three elements of a verb – meaning, actor, and tense. We went into some detail as to how each element appears in verbs in English and in Spanish. Because I taught the student the basic elements of verbs, his comprehensive knowledge allowed him to identify such things as tense and actor in his writing more easily and efficiently.
Some foundations are more problematic than others. For instance, some foundations are so poorly constructed that you are better off removing them and starting from scratch. Others, may just need a little patch work. However, you need to make sure that no matter how you fix the student’s foundation, that it is strong enough to be able to support another layer of substance on top. For instance, I would not have my student learn verbs in the subjunctive tense because he couldn’t correctly conjugate verbs in the indicative tense. Because the subjective tense requires understanding of all of the principles of verbs in the indicative tense and more, the subjunctive would reside on top of the indicative layer. And if that higher layer does not have a strong foundation, it will likely crumble on top of itself.
How you know how much reconstruction that you need to do to the student’s substance is by simply familiarizing yourself with the student’s substance. For instance, if you see consistent issues with verb conjugations in the student’s problem-solving, then that is a good sign that the student doesn’t understand verbs and thus needs to relearn them. Additionally, sometimes the student will avoid incorporating areas of substance in her problem-solving because she hasn’t learned that substance and thus doesn’t have that foundation built. For example, my drum set student would hardly ever use the right-side of the drum set in his grooves because he never learned how to incorporate that side of the drum set in his playing. Because this aspect of his substantive foundation was missing, he couldn’t build any grooves on the right-side of the drum set.
No matter how a rocky substantive foundation materializes in the lessons, when you see it, it is time to travel back in time as the student needs to “relearn” what she has already “learned” (I put learned in quotations because the student didn’t really learn it to begin with). Also, the student might need to go back to substantive foundation if she learned it, but because of new layers of substance on top of it, becomes out-of-touch with the original layer and thus does not utilize it well in her problem-solving.
Just like building a house, the builder needs to make sure that the foundation is solid so that the house can withstand the weight of the layers on top of it. Similarly, because substance accumulation is cumulative, a strong foundation promotes efficiency and effectiveness in problem- solving with substance that is yet to come. Normally, you see rocky foundations materialize in erroneous use of the substance and/or complete avoidance of it. When you see these issues, it is normally time to travel back in time and reteach what the student has already “learned”. Once the student “gets it”, you can again resume building the student’s house of knowledge layer by layer.
© Megan Prats 2015
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