Monday, October 29, 2012

Blinded by the forest, not seeing the leaves

Sometimes focusing on the big things, like the forests, makes us forget that the little things like the leaves are what indeed make up the forest. Students are often anxious to achieve the big goals, like getting the math problem correct or getting a high assignment score, without appreciating all the little things, the building blocks or leaves, that go into making a successful end product. Teachers need to help students recognise that 'how' they are learning is as important as 'what' they are learning. We need to make sure that students can see the leaves in the forests. But this is by no means an easy task, especially when many students only want to see the forests and feel that they are being distracted by the leaves. In those cases we have to let students imagine the forests without the leaves.

7 comments:

  1. Dear Dr. Joyanne, love your concept very much actually this always amazes me looking at the whole picture without paying attention to the details and for me as an obsessive person who is crazy about details cant make anything pass without analyzing it to its primitive unites which in my opinion make the information settle deep into my mind and never lost, i think also this is the base for the critical thinking method in learning.have a nice weekend

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  2. Dear Joyanne,it's important to us all to think in depth about everything not just take it from the surface.We have to admit that not all teachers have this ability to help students to think beyond what been taught.Children taught me to have this ability. working with kids 4-6 years old demanding alot of skills and in term to manage them you have to have open eyes ,good hearing ear and effective heart to watch and listen and have the desire to learn.Thinking about leaves only need paracticing so start thinking in depth strat thinkng criticaly start notice and feel the leaves

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  3. Dear Dr. Joyanne, sometimes we really need to think deeper, taking care of small details. Maybe during our rushing hours trying to manage time with many needs and tasks we do forget all small details focusing only on big target without looking for small benefits we gained during doing this task.So our student doing the same they are not alone we are sharing this with them, and to make them start critical thinking we should start sharing them feeling the leaves not only the forest.

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  4. You remind me of your famous phrase dig deeper . I always think of these two words because you want us to look deeply beyond our thoughts . there is a song by Zendaya Coleman - Dig Down Deeper
    ''You can keep things as they have always been
    And you'll never leave the road youve been planting in
    Take a chance and make the leap
    And anything can happen if you dig down deep''

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  5. you reminded me with the movie "Akeelah and the bee" about the little girl who was excellent speller and she's going to join the big contest, her teacher used to teach her small words and not big ones like the ones she will be asked about in the contest, he started to show her that big words are consisting of small words, and if she learnt those words she'll be able to spell any word even if she didn't see it before or heard about it before because she can divide it into the small words which she knows quite well.

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  6. Dear DR.Joyanne, You aroused a very important issue that I always discuss with my students. They are only interested in the final goals of learning( their scores,the forest) but they aren't interested in learning the language itself nor enjoy being able to express themselves and their needs through it(The leaves),They are not ready to understand the details or discuss situations, they want the final outcome.This due to the wrong thoughts we root in their minds as teachers about the importance of exams.May be because they are the digital Natives who are used to doing things so quickly and don't need or don't have the desire to read, think and analyze results or may be human who are interested in big goals, automatically and naturally not pay any attention to the smallest details even they are vital and important.

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  7. one amazing quote "blinded by forest not seeing the leaves "
    I guess if the teacher is not a detailed oriented person and focuses on every single detail in his/her class, he will miss a lot and students also will miss a lot.

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