 |
| Picasso |
I remember my Maths lessons, thinking what was the point of learning
factoring and vectors and quadratics. I didn’t use it in real life, I had no
intentions of talking about these kind of equations, so they weren’t even good
for conversation.
Why did we spend all those hours going over essay plans for History?
Introduction: Pose a question and then answer it broadly. First Paragraph:
Begin with an argument and then back it up with evidence, and ensure to
evaluate and give reasons considering the other side of the argument…
I could type out a whole hand sheet and give it to an A-Level student
and they would say it’s all wrong because I can’t remember it properly. Which
makes me think, why did we spend all those hours doing them when I can’t even
remember it now? It’s only been three years, I wasn’t a bad student, nothing
catastrophic has happened and wiped my memory clean. Time was wasted.
Or was it?
I’ve come to learn that subjects are a way of thinking, not just a body
of facts.
Sure, there are dates and places and monarchies and battles and armadas,
and rebellions and religions and hangings and empires… all to remember. That’s
the knowledge, the content of the subject, and with enough effort a student can
learn it.
What essay planning teaches us is how to synthesise all of these facts,
to pick out what is thematically relevant, to understand what affects what, the
causes and the effects…
Writing an essay requires students to use appropriate reasoning for the
subject as it practises and develops the way of thinking the subject needs. You’re
not just learning to plan an essay, you’re learning to evaluate and analyse,
each high-order skills (from Bloom’s taxonomy) that stretch a student in their
abilities.
These are our real tools: the ability to analyse, the ability to
synthesise, the ability to evaluate; doing these essays developed these skills,
skills that elevate us into better understanders and better learners.
We study physics not just to learn complex particles and forces, but so
that we also know intuitively that the bounce of the ball will diminish by half
after the first bounce so that when we are running down the line we can judge
the flight of the ball and control it accurately and are then able to execute a
perfect cross into the box for Van Persie to score a diving header into the top
righthand corner.
That was me applying physics to football. Poorly.
No comments:
Post a Comment