Mel Henderson

Critical thinking skills are essential in education, as they are in life. They are also difficult to develop and difficult to employ. It is much easier and much quicker to use emotion to solve problems and answer questions. That is how most of us approach politics, religion, and purchasing decsisions. We need to instill in our students a desire to approach decisions objectively and to allow the knee-jerk reaction phase to pass so that problems and questions can be solved and answered from a stand point of clarity and reasoning. 

I believe it would be important to present all these methods to students so that they can compare them to their own learning styles and choose the most effective ones that fit those styles. Mnemonics, loci, acronyms may all work but which is the most effective for the individual learner, that is the important thing to discover. 

Frequent reviews as part of a formative assessment of teaching and learning keep both instructor and student on track for learning. 

A talented teacher will know his/her students, their preferred learning styles, their intelligence styles, and how to connect with them. We've all been subject to teaching that was uninspiring, boring, and out of touch. Perhaps this is because it was delivered by an instructor who was not aware of either his learning style, which informed his teaching style, or his intelligence style, much less those of the students he taught. 

This unit was a nice review of the neurology of the brain and brain development. It is important to know the 3 stages of most growth and development and to realize that many of our students are right around, before or after, the last major development: the development of the prefrontal cortex that organizes higher order thinking skills. 

While safety is very important, communication and instruction about safety is also important, and above all else, appropriate safety modeling by the insructor is most important. Safety guidelines should be observed strictly and should be posted.

While assessment is vitally important, I feel it is difficult to develop appropriate assessments that accurately reflect true learing. Rubrics help but they must be constructed appropriately. They cannot be thrown together quickly but must be refletive of learning objectives and must be written simply and clearly. 

Familiarize yourself and your students with individual learning styles and teach to those. Be familiar with students individually. Actively reach out to them through their preferred style. Limit lecture and emphasize cooperative learning exercises. 

I believe it is very important to pay attention to the affective and psychomotor domains, just as it is in the cognitive domain, in order to develop well rounded students who have more than just the knowledge of the skill or technique. 

I think that finding creative, non-threatening formative assessments, such as the Muddiest/Clearest Point technique could be extremely valuable to assess teaching and learning and could be a low-stakes way for students to gauge themselves.