Learning by doing 4 ppsx

K nowing something and knowing that you know something are two different things.. You may know things you don’t know you know—odd little facts lying around in your head like Ted William

K NOWING W HAT

What makes you say,

“Now I get it!” or “I see

what you mean”? You have

learned something—

whether it’s parallel

parking a car or understanding terms in a

psychology class—when

you know that you

know it

K nowing something and knowing that

you know something are two different things You may know

things you don’t know you know—odd little facts lying

around in your head like Ted Williams’ batting average or the phone

number of your childhood home On the other hand, you can think you know something that you don’t really know, like the contents of that

chapter you read or lecture you heard but didn’t think about afterwards

To study effectively, you have to realize what you don’t really know It is

then that you will develop an awareness of your knowledge and

learn-ing processes

What Is Awareness?

Shirley read the assigned lesson on thinking for her psychology class She felt she knew the material she studied Yet, in class when the instructor started talking about cognition, she felt lost She looked at Charlene sitting next to her, and whispered,

“I don’t remember reading about that!” “It’s here, on page 27,” Charlene answered, showing Shirley the textbook Shirley asked Charlene after class, “How could I think I understood something, when I didn’t?”

Charlene laughed, “That’s just what the lesson was about— needing awareness so you know when you know, and know when you don’t.” Shirley shook her head, “I felt really involved reading about the experiments with the monkey in the beginning

of the lesson I guess I just skimmed over the rest of the reading,

so I thought the whole lesson was on the monkey It’s obvious that

I didn’t read it carefully enough.”

It is not easy to develop awareness You must bring up to the level

of consciousness things you’ve more or less taken for granted, things you’ve let lie low Awareness is like a cog in the machinery of the brain, because it helps you move and connect other information Another word for

aware-ness is cognition Cognition is knowing when you know something.

BUILDING AWARENESS

Realizing exactly how you go about mentally processing what you read and hear may not come naturally to you It’s difficult because reading and hearing are things people do automatically For example, someone wouldn’t say to himself, before opening a book, “I’ll open this book now and turn to the page where I left off last time Then I’ll move my eyes across and down each page until I get to the end of this lesson .” He just does it

How do you know when you know something? How do you know

for sure? How do you know, for example, that one plus one equals two?

You might say, “Of course, I know it!” But—how do you know you

Use your own learning styles to build an awareness of what

you know:

• If you learn best by seeing: You might say,“Here’s one pencil, and

here’s another pencil I can see there are two pencils.”

• If you learn best by hearing: You might say, “Here’s the sound of

one pencil making a tap on the table, and here’s the sound of a

second pencil tap I hear two taps.”

• If you learn best by images: You might say, “I know one plus one

makes two because I picture one pencil and then the other and I

see that there are two.”

• If you learn best by ordering things: You might say, “The order

is right I know that I start with two individual pencils and end up

with a pair.”

• If you learn best by doing: You might pick up one pencil and pick

up another, and say, “I see them, I feel them Here they are, one

plus one equals two.”

There can be many different ways to know that you know; you just

have to figure out which way is yours

PUTTING AWARENESS TO THE TEST

It’s one thing to think you know, and another to actually know Test

your-self to find out how well you know something you are studying

SEEING IS BELIEVING

One way you know something is by seeing it in your head Using images

to reconstruct what you brought away from chemistry class, a good

movie, or a dance recital comes naturally for many people Charlene, who

we met in the beginning of this chapter, knows she learns well using

images Read on to see how she made sense of the cognition chapter

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Charlene checked to see that she knew what she thought she knew by drawing a picture of her study material Since the images that came to her mind were so clear she could draw a detailed and coherent picture, she was able to say, “I know that I know this because the pictures are clear in my head.”

MAKING ORDER

Another way to test your understanding of what you’ve studied is to review the order of events Charlene also used an order-oriented approach to sup-plement her picture:

Charlene listed events and drew a timeline to demonstrate what she absorbed from studying This helped her notice where the part about the monkey ended and the definition of cognition began She was able to say,

“I know that the subject is changing because there is a clear sequence of events.”

THE QUEST FOR QUESTIONS

Another way to check yourself is to come up with questions Charlene was an extremely thorough student, and ended up answering all her own questions

Charlene came up with several questions based on her picture and timeline She then went back to her text and answered those questions and changed her picture and timeline until they were both clear Then, when she had no more questions, she was sure she knew the material At that point, the picture and the timeline were clear in her mind, the order

of events was clear, and the timeline and picture were obviously related Then she was able to say, “I get it!”

BUILDING ON WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW

Thinking about what you’ve read or listened to helps you identify what you know, and this helps you make sense of what you studied When you can connect new material to things you already know, you learn the material faster and remember it longer

The best way to make connections between new and old material is to use your learning styles Use the ideas below to build on

• If you learn best by seeing: Compare old notes to new notes;

look for common words and phrases, and make connections between ideas

• If you learn best by hearing: Read your notes aloud Listen for

familiar words and phrases Where have you heard them before?

• If you learn best by making images: Draw pictures or maps of

what you see when you study Do these images bring to mind|

something you’ve learned in the past?

• If you learn best by order: First review old material and then take

a look at a new assignment in the same subject Make a timeline

or list of events starting from the old material and working through the new See how things progressed, or didn’t

• If you learn best by doing: Role play If you’re reading a novel, act

out the part of the hero or heroine Does that character remind you of anyone you know? This familiarity could help you write your essay

As you try one or more of these methods, are you aware of how you

are studying? Think, write, or talk about it

DISCOVERING THE FAMILIAR

Here’s a sample version of how you can use what’s familiar to help you

learn and remember something that’s unfamiliar

• Skim through a page of a text you’re studying or a newspaper and

find a word that’s new to you—for example, the word crumpet.

• Find parts of that word you already know: crum and pet or et.

• In your notebook, write down other words that have the same

letters as those in the parts you’ve identified: crumb and petty.

• What similar meaning is in your list of words? You might say that

crumb is a small piece of food and petty describes something that

doesn’t matter very much

Try It!

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Now you have a general idea of what the new word could mean For

example, crumpet could mean a small piece of food that’s not important.

To be sure, you may want to check your definition with the dictionary’s

definition For example, the dictionary definition of crumpet is “a light bread, often toasted.” By coming to your definition first, you’ve made what you learned meaningful to you And you’ve used cognition You used

what you already knew!

The first step in studying is to recognize what you know You know when

you know something when:

• You can make clear images in your mind of what you’re studying

• What you’re reading or listening to follows a clear order

• You’ve answered all your own questions