{"id":4731,"date":"2019-06-22T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4731"},"modified":"2019-06-12T09:00:38","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T14:00:38","slug":"putting-the-canary-on-a-better-book-shelf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/putting-the-canary-on-a-better-book-shelf\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting The Canary on a Better Book Shelf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Take a moment to evaluate this statement:<\/p>\n

The canary is an hour long.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You didn’t have to think very hard to decide that this statement is false.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Why? Because “canary” and “an hour” belong in different mental categories. One is a physical object; the other is a unit of time.<\/p>\n

Unless you’re Emily Dickinson, they can’t be the same thing.<\/p>\n

Over at 3-Star Learning Experiences,\u00a0Mirjam Neelen and Paul A. Kirschner want us to think about our students as they learn new concepts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In particular, students often have ideas in the wrong categories<\/em>. When that happens, these “prior misconceptions” make correct understanding extremely difficult.<\/p>\n

To help them learn new concepts, therefore, we don’t simply need to ply them with more information. Instead, we need to help them rethink prior misconceptions.<\/p>\n

In other words, we need to help them reshelve old ideas in new mental categories<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For Example…<\/h2>\n

In my classroom, students struggle with the idea that\u00a0The Scarlet Letter<\/em> is a romance<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Why? Because they already have a very clear concept of the word “romance.” Their pre-existing definition doesn’t include … well … anything<\/em> that happens in Puritan Boston.<\/p>\n

Could anything be less romantic than, say, Hester and Dimmesdale meeting in the woods with Pearl?<\/p>\n

My teacherly mission: help students build a new concept of “romance.” Once they think about romance as Hawthorne did, they’ll have a new category of knowledge. And, that category quite comfortably fits all the oddities that make\u00a0Scarlet Letter<\/em> so strange and wonderful.<\/p>\n

For further thoughts on this process, check out Neelen and Kirschner’s post<\/a>. Me: I’m looking forward to Part II!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A student’s “prior misconceptions” often interfere with new learning. To help them understand new material, we first need to identify the misconceptions that make it hard to understand in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-4731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-conceptual-change"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4731"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4736,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4731\/revisions\/4736"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}