thinking in the classroom: conceptual thought

Conceptual thinking is looking at something and being able to process the general idea of what that item is. For example, if you have a general notion of what a sentence is, you can use that knowledge to build upon the idea of making sentences to form a paragraph and making paragraphs to form an essay etc. The great thing about conceptual thinking is that once you can identify something and are able to categorize items, you do not have to continually relearn what a specific item is. In short, once you know a book is a book, you can add things into that category because you have an understanding that a book is something that is bound, has writing and or pictures, a cover and a back. Therefore you can place other similar items into the field because you have something to help you identify and categorize such as a magazine,a booklet, or a pamphlet.

Conceptual Thinking In the Subject Area

For language one of the most important concepts is the relation between the language being learned and the culture that it relates to. Language is in its own way, culture. For example, when learning the Japanese language, you cannot separate the process of learning to speak from the culture. This is because the culture had a huge impact on the way that the language developed. For example, you would not speak to a teacher or a stranger the same way that you wold speak with someone like a friend or a family member. Likewise, you would also not refer to yourself in a way that seemed to praise your status or the status of your family. You always want to show a great deal of respect for someone else while being humble towards your self. This aspect is indeed ingrained on the culture of the Japanese people and it would be virtually impossible to learn any of the language without gaining knowledge and understanding of the culture. The idea that language is culture is a concept that can be built upon and helps to increase ones' understanding of the language in whole.

However, there are other ways of thinking that can help to increase the knowledge of a person. For instance you can use inductive thinking to help you expand something from specific to general. In short, you form conclusions about the whole subject in a general way. With language still being our example, one could take the conceptual idea that language is culture and expand upon it with inductive reasoning to assume that all Japanese people follow the rules of etiquette when speaking to another person. Although this would be a false assumption, it would be a way to help understand they way that the Japanese language is used in relation to a persons position in society. The general assumption would be that any time you encounter a person of a higher social standing than yourself, you address them more formally than you would a friend or family member.

Although different in the way that thought is processed, both of these ways of thinking can help a student learn about a subject. Both an help to enhance the experience of learning and teaching so that both the teacher and the student can get the the most out of any occurance.

the first reading

This is my first blog which means that I'm new to being the one doing the blogging although I have read some and found them quite interesting. Our teacher Mr. Wong asked us to incorporate technology into our learning experience and I guess felt that having a blog would be one of the best ways to do it.

As for the reading that we had to complete for tomorrow's class, I found it interesting enough. I was surprised to learn that most people, teachers mainly, were as torn as to how to teach children how to read. It was surprising that so many have such a wide view on how and what should be taught and also when it should be taught. For example, should you begin to teach children phonics first or have them memorize full words and/or phases? When can children begin to comprehend reading material at a level where it actually transforms into learning from the material? These questions and many more arose as I was reading and they were asked by the author as well.

While I am hardly qualified to give advice on this topic as I am by no means an expert, I cannot help but think children should be taught using a variety of approaches and not just one. Why can't the basic-skills-and-phonics approach be blended with the whole-language approach? Wouldn't this indeed suit a wider range of learning styles? Wouldn't this produce children who read better younger? I could not help but see the difference in what makes a person an expert and what makes them an intermediate when I thought of these questions. We all know that an expert is a person with a whole wealth of knowledge in an area of interest, however does that mean that person will be a great teacher?

I find that often the answer is no. In fact if an expert has so much knowledge on a subject I think that it becomes second nature to him. Meaning that the way that they think about the material is on a different level than a student who is just learning about the topic. In other words, it can be difficult for a person who has so much insight on a particular subject to look back and remember how they felt when they first began to build this knowledge. Since they already know about the topic they may have a hard time relating the smaller intricacies to an audience who has no prior knowledge of the topic. This frustrates not only the teacher, but also the students who are now struggling to learn. In this sense all of the knowledge the expert has has failed them because they are unable to relay any of that knowledge to others.

I suppose this is where an intermediate teacher has a slight advantage over someone who is simply an expert and does not understand how to teach. As the intermediate is learning the material, they are able to keep in mind the audience whom they are teaching. Since the material may be new and interesting for the intermediate, they think about what helped them to learn and retain the information and in that way have an easier time relaying the information back to the students. Of course this is not to say that one should not amass expert level knowledge in a subject, it is simply a matter of knowing how to share the information with others.