Just as a famous chef buys the best quality organic foods to prepare a culinary delight, an expert learning specialist combines the best educational and brain research with creative teaching techniques to accelerate learning.
Dr. Jean Piaget advocated using concrete, simple words to insure comprehension. These words should be easily understood through seeing and touching or by images. A baseball might be shown within a player's glove on a baseball field to teach the word baseball or the "B" sound. Understanding forms the base of learning.
Dr. Samuel Orton recommended multisensory teaching. In other words, you should be able to see (visual stimuli), say (motoric stimuli), hear (auditory stimuli), relate new information to old and familiar (connecting stimuli), and trace or write (motoric stimuli) a new fact or concept. If one piece of information is studied with this multisensory method, the fact will be stored in five different parts of the brain.
A hamburger with a top bun made of vowel(s), a bottom bun made of vowel(s) and the letter S as filling makes a Z-burger.
For example, the letter S squished between two vowels creates a Z sound as in "Susan" or "easy." This fact can be illustrated by visualizing a hamburger with a top bun made of vowel(s), a bottom bun made of vowel(s) and the letter S as filling. A Z-burger!
This phonetic fact will be easier to remember and retrieve by saying out loud: S makes two sounds, S and Z. Then look at the Z-Burger and say words like "Susan" and "Visa." Also, trace the VSV = Z. Thus, by combining the research of Piaget and Orton, learning speed increases.
Rapid but long-term learning depends upon storage and retrieval of facts for application. Throughout history, famous people have researched memory tactics. Recently, Dr. Donald Deschler and Dr. Brock Eide have contributed mnemonics to the field of education for at-risk learners. Powerful memory tactics include stories, rhymes, poems and songs.
For example, tell a tall tale about the letter S. Did you know that the letter Z smells horribly? No one wants to sit near Z. The letter S wears great perfume and is really friendly. Everyone wants to sit near S. Therefore, whenever possible, smart spellers choose sweet-smelling S instead of Z. Surprised?
By adding this last ingredient of a narrative memory device to the mixture of concrete explanations, illustrations and multisensory techniques, learning is accelerated.
Therefore, regardless of subject matter, an effective, accelerated and thorough learning strategy combines concrete language with picture images, multisensory presentations and several memory tactics to insure the learning.
Try them yourself. You'll probably love the results.
