How the Kids Learn?

Base on my experience as a teacher, there are a lot of ways that the kids absorb knowledge from the teaching and learning activities performed in school. I group these into three main group:

By listening
Some kids intend more to be better in understanding something that was thought is by only listening to the teachers. This kind of pupils can learn without looking to their teacher and can learn instead they are blind. But a good teacher whose can elaborate the contents of learning will enhance this type of pupils.


By doing
Some kids learn more by doing something that related to what they are learning. By this way, this type of pupils need to be actively involve in classroom activities such as drama, experiments and activities that need they doing something...

By looking
Some kids love to see something colourful. As these type of kids sees the colorful will make them enquiries what they are seeing and can remember what they have seen longer than the other types.

Students'common misconceptions about fractions

Believing that fractions' numerators and denominators can be treated as separate whole numbers. Students often add or subtract the numerators and denominators of two fractions (e.g., 2/4 + 5/4 = 7/8 or 3/5 – 1/2 = 2/3). These students fail to recognize that denominators define the size of the fractional part and that numerators represent the number of this part. The fact that this approach is used for multiplication of fractions is another source of confusion.

Failing to find a common denominator when adding or subtracting fractions with unlike denominators. Students often fail to convert fractions to a common, equivalent denominator before adding or subtracting them, and instead just use the larger of the 2 denominators in the answer (e.g., 4/5 + 4/10=8/10). Students do not understand that different denominators reflect different-sized unit fractions and that adding and subtracting fractions requires a common unit fraction (i.e. denominator).

Believing that only whole numbers need to be manipulated in computations with fractions greater than one. When adding or subtracting mixed numbers, students may ignore the fractional parts and work only with the whole numbers (e.g., 53/5 – 21/7 = 3). These students are either ignoring the part of the problem they do not understand, misunderstanding the meaning of mixed numbers, or assuming that such problems simply have no solution.

Leaving the denominator unchanged in fraction addition and multiplication problems. Students often leave the denominator unchanged on fraction multiplication problems that have equal denominators (e.g., 2/3 × 1/3 = 2/3). This may occur because students usually encounter more fraction addition problems than fraction multiplication problems. They incorrectly apply the correct procedure for dealing with equal denominators on addition problems to multiplication.

Failing to understand the invert-and-multiply procedure for solving fraction division problems. Students often misapply the invert-and-multiply procedure for dividing by a fraction because they lack conceptual understanding of the procedure. One common error is not inverting either fraction; for example, a student may solve the problem 2/3 ÷ 4/5 by multiplying the fractions without inverting 4/5 (e.g., writing that 2/3 ÷ 4/5 = 8/15). Other common misapplications of the invert-and-multiply rule are inverting the wrong fraction (e.g., 2/3 ÷ 4/5 = 3/2 × 4/5) or inverting both fractions (2/3 ÷ 4/5 = 3/2 × 5/4). Such errors generally reflect a lack of conceptual understanding of why the invert-and-multiply procedure produces the correct quotient. The invert-and-multiply procedure translates a multi-step calculation into a more efficient procedure.

   

Learning???

I want to talk about learning. But not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!" Carl Rogers 1983: 18-19

Learning as a product

Pick up a standard psychology textbook - especially from the 1960s and 1970s and you will probably find learning defined as a change in behaviour. In other words, learning is approached as an outcome - the end product of some process. It can be recognized or seen. This approach has the virtue of highlighting a crucial aspect of learning - change. It's apparent clarity may also make some sense when conducting experiments. However, it is rather a blunt instrument. For example:

• Does a person need to perform in order for learning to have happened?

• Are there other factors that may cause behaviour to change?

• Can the change involved include the potential for change? (Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 124)

Learning as a process - task-conscious or acquisition learning and learning-conscious or formalized learning

In the five categories that Säljö identified we can see learning appearing as a process - there is a concern with what happens when the learning takes place. In this way, learning could be thought of as 'a process by which behaviour changes as a result of experience' (Maples and Webster 1980 quoted in Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 124). One of the significant questions that arises is the extent to which people are conscious of what is going on. Are they aware that they are engaged in learning - and what significance does it have if they are? Such questions have appeared in various guises over the years - and have surfaced, for example, in debates around the rather confusing notion of 'informal learning'.

One particularly helpful way of approaching the area has been formulated by Alan Rogers (2003). Drawing especially on the work of those who study the learning of language (for example, Krashen 1982), Rogers sets out two contrasting approaches: task-conscious or acquisition learning and learning-conscious or formalized learning.