Chapter 7: Teaching Difficult Academic Material

To help students “get going” with new and hard material, find out what they already know and link the new material to something they already know well.

I loved this quote since I actually did this in my mentor’s classroom. I asked students to raise their hand if they knew and could use the 3 new terms that I was going to present to them. This allowed me to see what the students did, or didn’t know before I began teaching. If they had all, already known and felt confident with the 3 terms, then I could use more sophisticated terms and teach differently then if the students were clueless. I then tied the new terms to an old concept/ game they knew, rock paper scissors, when they were practicing how to use the new terms. I feel that this is a great way to teach difficult material and help make a smooth transition between content materials, by relating the old to the new. I also think this will help motivate students to try and learn the material faster if they have something to relate it to.