Demonstrating Learning

Remember Charlie Brown’s teacher?  She always came across with “wuh-wa-wuh-wa-wa-waaaa”.  Who knew what she was talking about?   Have you ever thought about what our students hear about 15 minutes into a lecture?  I’ll give you one guess.

Telling students what to do cannot replace showing them how to do it.  Someone should have told Charlie’s teacher to show, don’t tell.

Brian Cambourne studied the conditions of learning for more than 20 years.  At the core of his research lies none other than student engagement.  When engagement is up, discipline problems are down.  Test scores are up.  Achievement is up.  Fun is up—for everyone involved.

One condition of learning that Cambourne has zeroed in on is demonstration learning.  Demonstration is the “ability to observe (see, hear, witness, experience, feel, study, explore) actions and artifacts”. 

One popular demonstrational technique for teaching reading is the think-aloud.  This way, you, the experienced reader in the room, can provide the key to unlock the text.  Remember that all of our content areas come with a new set of vocabulary.  Students need the demonstration of cognitive strategies to help tackle the material in front of them.

Students can learn to parrot back answers, but that is neither thinking nor learning.  Teachers can demonstrate thinking as a way to move beyond the questions.  We need to show students that comprehension doesn’t stop with knowing all the answers.  It often means that you are just starting to find the questions.

Demonstrating the process of learning rather than teaching chunks of information is one of the best practices that secondary content area teachers can use, especially when teachers are struggling to cover more and more content each year.  While thinking aloud through the text may be daunting for content area teachers, it is a perfect opportunity to demonstrate to students how to access a particularly difficult text.  Remember, you are the expert in the room.  Share your expertise.