WAKE UP TEACHERS, TRY TO TEACH A MEANINGFUL LEARNING!
Are you tired and fed up of teaching your students by heart all the time? Would you like your students express their ideas or opinions? Do you only evaluate concrete tasks based on rote learning? Are you only developing rote learning in your students? Are you looking for a change? If you answered “yes” is time to rise and shine, because you are losing valuable time for you and your students. Most of the time in my working experience, I have seen frustrated teachers who are tired and not interested in teaching a rote learning any more, but they don’t know what to do. This is exactly the reason why teachers have to wake up. Remember that times are always changing and rote learning is a prehistoric one. However, you can stop this, if you try to link student’s previous experiences and knowledge with new information, then you are going to develop a “meaningful learning”
The causes of “Meaningful learning” are due to reflective, critical and creative thinking. According to Ausubel’s theory (2000), it is described as a process of relating new material to relevant established entities in cognitive structure. If this information makes sense, as a teacher you need to have the availability to give your students the possibility to link the new learning to what they already know. Besides, you should be aware that it is not only related to student’s memory, but also their feelings, experiences, beliefs, background and so forth. As a result or consequence of using this method, your students could learn in a better way. For example, they are going to feel more motivated to learn because this time the learning will be useful and representative of their own experiences or previous events and not in isolation or without a previous connection. Besides, they are going to feel more confident owing to the fact that they already have previous knowledge as a base; moreover, their learning is going to be more durable than before, when students only study for a test, and then they forget everything about it.
As a matter of fact, nobody had said that it would be easy, but keep in mind that nothing is impossible. There is no sense in giving you up before trying it. I assure you, it is going to make you feel better as a real teacher. After all, you are going to teach with a purpose, which is to give your students a way of seeing learning as a transformation of themselves and using it for life and not only for a test. Finally, you can improve students learning process and also their personal development, as well by doing interactive activities, problem-solving tasks, group work and so on. In my opinion, teachers shouldn’t teach their students rote learning all the time in each subject at school. Most certainly, you need to realize about what learning means, not only by taking this as a requirement, but also as an essential human being’s movement. Here, my dear readers, you have the “key”. If you start to reflect about your teaching methods, this will be the beginning of a change and where you develop meaningful learning in the way you are going to teach your students.
Are you tired and fed up of teaching your students by heart all the time? Would you like your students express their ideas or opinions? Do you only evaluate concrete tasks based on rote learning? Are you only developing rote learning in your students? Are you looking for a change? If you answered “yes” is time to rise and shine, because you are losing valuable time for you and your students. Most of the time in my working experience, I have seen frustrated teachers who are tired and not interested in teaching a rote learning any more, but they don’t know what to do. This is exactly the reason why teachers have to wake up. Remember that times are always changing and rote learning is a prehistoric one. However, you can stop this, if you try to link student’s previous experiences and knowledge with new information, then you are going to develop a “meaningful learning”
The causes of “Meaningful learning” are due to reflective, critical and creative thinking. According to Ausubel’s theory (2000), it is described as a process of relating new material to relevant established entities in cognitive structure. If this information makes sense, as a teacher you need to have the availability to give your students the possibility to link the new learning to what they already know. Besides, you should be aware that it is not only related to student’s memory, but also their feelings, experiences, beliefs, background and so forth. As a result or consequence of using this method, your students could learn in a better way. For example, they are going to feel more motivated to learn because this time the learning will be useful and representative of their own experiences or previous events and not in isolation or without a previous connection. Besides, they are going to feel more confident owing to the fact that they already have previous knowledge as a base; moreover, their learning is going to be more durable than before, when students only study for a test, and then they forget everything about it.
As a matter of fact, nobody had said that it would be easy, but keep in mind that nothing is impossible. There is no sense in giving you up before trying it. I assure you, it is going to make you feel better as a real teacher. After all, you are going to teach with a purpose, which is to give your students a way of seeing learning as a transformation of themselves and using it for life and not only for a test. Finally, you can improve students learning process and also their personal development, as well by doing interactive activities, problem-solving tasks, group work and so on. In my opinion, teachers shouldn’t teach their students rote learning all the time in each subject at school. Most certainly, you need to realize about what learning means, not only by taking this as a requirement, but also as an essential human being’s movement. Here, my dear readers, you have the “key”. If you start to reflect about your teaching methods, this will be the beginning of a change and where you develop meaningful learning in the way you are going to teach your students.
