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1. Respond/Comment on the Key Question provided by your Host

2. Post your own question

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When we think of retention, we often think towards the end of the lesson but I agree with Dr Willis that students don’t learn if they are not interested. Hence, the start of the lesson is important too. [Sparking curiosity]

Engineering lesson activities that start with a change in pattern to entice students’ sensory intake (through novelty, curiosity and the unexpected).

Upon reflection, the lessons/concepts that my students remember the most information are the ones that I started with an interesting hook or novel activity.

I feel that this is especially important for our profile of students as we often have students who lack motivation or interest in academics or the specific subject we teach.

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I believe that students can be creative problem solvers.

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is how often do we give students the space to problem solve? (and possibly fail?)

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Song Beng - Template for Obtain & Sustain the Brain's Attentive Focus for Independent Learning in the Digital Age

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Song Beng - Template for Obtain & Sustain the Brain's Attentive Focus for Independent Learning in the Digital Age

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Song Beng - Template for Building Powerful Executive Function Skills for Creative Problem-Solving

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Song Beng - Template for Building Powerful Executive Function Skills for Creative Problem-Solving

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Usually students recall things that provide a cognitive dissonance - something that challenges their notions.

Hence, I'll start some of my lessons with extreme examples or even use real life case studies to share to amplify a point. They might forget the syllabus point, but somehow they'll remember the extreme example. So I use that as my starting point to weave back into the lesson.

One example is the methods of Japanese Fruit Farmers in developing expensive fruits in relation to transport in flowering plants in Biology.

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I strongly disagree.

In my work with Sec 4 and 5 students in Physical Education. We carry out a module known as inventing games. Students are given a platform to invent a new game as a response to solve problems of existing games. They also culminate in applying their knowledge of games concepts across their past 3-4 years of PE in northbrooks. And they've done well in the presentation and execution too!

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Creation of a new game to solve existing problems of previously played games.

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I believe students can be creative problem solvers. However, they need the time and space to think, some guiding questions to spark the thinking process, time to implement, reflect, the emotional strategies to cope with failure and bounce back up again (resilience), before moving on to work on it again (grit).

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Students have the innate creativity in them. However, they often do not have the space to express their creativity to solve problems. Often, they can be given the feedback that their solutions do not work or their suggestions are not valid. Instead, we should aim to guide them further in this creativity process and develop their solutions further. The thought process and skill of creative problem solving, is not formally taught in school, unfortunately.

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I've taught some of my students strategies that they can apply during their self-revision, which is aligned and similar to what Dr Willis shared. The one key thing I told them is to take 30 minutes every night to look through everything they have learnt from that same day, go to sleep and let their brain consolidate these information when they are sleeping. Other strategies include aligning study habits to their preferred learning style, such as reading out their notes to themselves if they are audio learners, pace while revising and include hand gestures if they are tactile learners, write/draw up their own notes and mindmaps if they are a visual learner, etc. I think these may help them in retaining information taught in class and identifying their own learning gaps. I feel that there is no one-shoe-fits-all, and that the onus is on the students. As teachers we can vary the types of medium we use during our lessons, but it will never be a 100% hit.

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Opportunities must be given to ask questions about a unique problem which goes against their intuition or the natural sense of how things work around them.

When challenged with sufficient scaffolding and thinking routines, sometimes the weaker ones may catch us by surprise. :)

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Melissa (Past example of sparking curiosity to enhance conceptual understanding in the geography classroom) 

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Melissa (Past example of sparking curiosity to enhance conceptual understanding in the geography classroom) 

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Balloons filled with water vs air to demonstrate the concept of differential heating/heat capacity. So that students can apply and remember how to explain the formation of land/sea breeze.