The guest speaker talked a lot about learning, and the differences between learning about and learning for real. I had never heard this phrased that way and so i was shocked and pleasantly surprised by the eloquence of that description. He used multiple examples that showed our past knowledge strongly colored our beliefs even when faced with the knowledge that we were wrong ( example of a hole in a sheet of steel).
He also explained that our connections are really important to how we learn. Random facts hold no importance to us unless we see how they connect to us. So connecting the learning to the student is also really important. Overall he introduced some novel ideas that i wish to implement.
In some ways its seems that based on the prior knowledge, in addition to a pretest showing what people got right, it may be more important to pay attention to what students got wrong and WHY they got it wrong to spend a lot of time discussing those. I had a teacher that would offer half credit back on missed exam questions if you explained why you got it wrong and how to get the correct answer in-depth. Applying that method would incentivize figuring out why you got things wrong and how to get over those misconceptions.
As for connection to the students its on a case by case basis, but I think it would be important to explain how they use chemical reactions to clean and do other things in daily life, maybe explaining through examples of soda or other things.
He also explained that our connections are really important to how we learn. Random facts hold no importance to us unless we see how they connect to us. So connecting the learning to the student is also really important. Overall he introduced some novel ideas that i wish to implement.
In some ways its seems that based on the prior knowledge, in addition to a pretest showing what people got right, it may be more important to pay attention to what students got wrong and WHY they got it wrong to spend a lot of time discussing those. I had a teacher that would offer half credit back on missed exam questions if you explained why you got it wrong and how to get the correct answer in-depth. Applying that method would incentivize figuring out why you got things wrong and how to get over those misconceptions.
As for connection to the students its on a case by case basis, but I think it would be important to explain how they use chemical reactions to clean and do other things in daily life, maybe explaining through examples of soda or other things.