As a child enters the stage of their life when school is apparent, one must know how to encourage them to learn. While it’s true that some students have learning disabilities that cause them to learn slowly and less sufficiently than others, there are important steps that can be taken to ensure metacognition and critical thinking.
In order to teach a child one must first know how the memory works, this can be explained by metacognitive knowledge, “a person’s knowledge and awareness of cognitive processes” (Kail and Cavanaugh, 2016, p. 199). As information goes into the brain it is organized into two groups, working memory and long-term memory. The difference is simply storage space, long-term memory has more space than the working memory. As a child learns it is important to move as many memories to long term as possible. This is because this memory is permanent and does not fade while the working memory only holds items for a certain period of time.
When a child first enters school it usually is very scary for them. Being away from their parents can cause them to be upset, which is why teachers should recognize this and not yell at them for crying or being upset, they are very young after all. In the beginning of a child’s education elaboration, a “memory strategy in which information is embellished to make it more memorable” (Kail and Cavanaugh, 2016, p. 199) is very helpful is the memorization process. This would be things like songs or rhymes to help a child learn, such as the alphabet song or in my case a story to remember the quadratic formula. A child cannot however, be dependent on their teacher, they must also practice self-regulated learning to ensure that they will be able to figure out question independently at a later age.
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As a child grows older it is important that they be taught the value of education and goal setting as they start to you the skill of cognitive self-regulation which is when I child starts “identifying goals, selecting effective strategies and monitoring accurately” (Kail and Cavanaugh, 2016, p. 200). The child’s awareness of education will help them during this process. During this time the teacher must also introduce critical thinking problems into their education. This will aid the student further into their education by teaching them how to problem solve and figure out different ways to get to the solution. It is also important that the teacher include real life scenarios into this regime because once the child is out of school there is no reason they should not know what to do or where to go.
The most important tip that schools can remember is not to overload their students with information. A student shouldn’t be memorizing the answers to a test inly to forget them the day after. The child must be self-sufficient and learn that memorization isn’t the key to success, dedication ad devoting time to their studies is. A child should be explained the benefits of doing well in school and be reminded that while memorization is a good study technique you must truly understand the subject in order to learn it.
