Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Relevent is relative
In my experience learning math, I wouldn't say that my teachers ever really made an attempt to make the material relevent to me and my life. It was more a matter of this is what you should do and you are going to do it. On the contrary when my mother tutored me all her examples were based on how this could be applied to real life. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't but it gave me the understanding of the neccessity. Now in my tutoring experiences I make sure to say 'suppose you were going to do X' or 'ok think about when you do Y'. I feel like these statements make the concepts more tangible and therefore more likely to stick with them. Both students went on to excel after our work together so I think that is at least a small indication I am correct.
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2 comments:
I know this person that can take anything he reads and relate it to something. It may be something I have never heard of or seem so unrelated to me, but he makes it real and tangible. If we could do that and captivate their attention, it doesn't have to be directly related to them.
Relevance to real life is definitely important. Just as you stated when your mother explained mathematics to you,the relevance can make a difference. The reason for much of our lectures and reading is to get us to realize that what ever we do in the classroom should have relevance to the students or they will not see the relevance or have a difficult time understanding. We have to keep this in mind as we prepare to instruct.
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