I’ve been listening to the Kwik Brain podcast and something
I heard the other day really stuck with me. If you haven’t listened to this
podcast, it has great strategies for better learning. Jim Kwik stated,
“Knowledge is not power. It is potential power. It only becomes power when
you use it.”
I like to learn new things and get new information but if I
don’t actually apply my new skills or knowledge, I tend to easily forget the
information.
Just having the information about anything become useless
facts if I can’t use them in any way other than a trivia game.
When I apply my new skills or knowledge, I tend to remember
what I learned much better.
Suddenly my new information has become powerful when I
learned to apply it to situations in my life.
Too many times I think that if I just give my students the
information they need, they will have the power to make changes in their lives.
This is not true.
This is why I need to end the lessons I teach with the
questions, “How can I use this information in my own life?” This is a question
that students need to ask themselves and come up with an answer. In fact, this
may be the most important part of the lesson.
I need to make sure they are able to answer this question.
If they can’t, this is the time for a class discussion. Others can help with
suggestions that a student might not have thought about. Brainstorming is
always helpful when I need inspiration. The big problem is when no one is able
to come up with suggestions to answer this question. Maybe I haven’t made the
lesson message clear enough.
If I’m teaching a lesson where the answer to this question
is not important, then maybe I need to take a harder look at my lesson. I need
to ask myself why I’m teaching this lesson to begin with? Is it just busy work?
Am I wasting everyone’s time? Maybe if the students struggle with the lesson
and applying the information, my lesson and not the students may be the
problem.
How do you help students apply knowledge? Please share.
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