In chapter five of They Snooze You Lose by Lynell Burmark (2011), the author builds on the previous chapter’s concepts of making new information “stick,” by discussing using prior knowledge, making abstract concepts more concrete, and using compare and contrast. Burmark (2011) says that in order to get people to retain information they have to make a connection to it.
I’ve heard that using compare and contrast in classrooms is incredibly effective from multiple sources. I’ve even seen it in my own classroom. One of the SMART notebook apps is a template where a set of words, images, numbers or other symbols can be sorted into one of two swirling vortexes. When I would lecture about mitosis and meiosis as two separate entities, I would get blank stares. We took short quizzes over each topic, and the grades I got back left me in despair. So when I went to another faculty meeting where my administration was singing the praises of compare and contrast, I went back to my classroom armed with some venn diagrams. We filled out the diagrams together as a class, and I let the kids play with the swirling vortex app on the SMART board. After a week of studying mitosis and meiosis as they related to each other, instead of in a vacuum, quiz scores on both topics rose dramatically. I will be including it in many more presentations in the future.
References
Burmark, L. (2011). They Snooze, You Lose: The Educator's Guide to Successful Presentations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
No comments:
Post a Comment