Tuesday 17 July 2007

How to teach

Had a bit of a break, but now I'm back!

I stumbled across a cool site today: Amateur Astronomy. Work your way through it, it'll only take you 5 minutes or so.

It's nothing flashy, complicated or groundbreaking, but it is a very simple tutorial on a few key points. That exemplifies some key points in teaching.

  • Minimise: break it down into a very small number of simple points per lesson. Have multiple lessons if necessary.
  • Repeat: keep going over the points you've already covered and recap frequently so that everything branches off from one point.
  • Practice: make sure there's something for your pupils to do. The astronomy example is a good webpage, but if you're giving a presentation have multiple choices for people to show their hands at, or if it's with kids have them move about and vote with their feet or something.
  • Cheat: provide tricks and tips for how to remember things, anecdotes and jokes make for a more enjoyable lesson and that will trigger the memory. If you have to teach facts hunt for little mnemonics, I am truly awful at remembering formulae, after many many years studying physics pretty much the only formula I can remember is that for a pendulum - "The laws of nature quoth he, are truly a marvel to me, for each tick and tock, of the grandfather clock is 2 pi root l over g"

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