“Memory is the residue of thought…To teach well, you should pay careful attention to what an assignment will actually make students think about (not what you hope they will think about), because that is what they will remember.” (p.58)
I think this quote especially applies to what we are trying to do for the children with our games project. It’s important that we don’t just hope that through the games the kids will pick up on geography or how culture impacts different places. We are responsible for what the children learn, not what we think they will learn. In order to apply this to our project we must actually make it a part of the game in which the students will need to know something about a certain topic to figure out the answer.
“The human mind seems exquisitely tuned to understand and remember stories— so much so that psychologists sometimes refer to stories as ‘psychologically privileged,’ meaning that they are treated differently in memory than other types of material. I’m going to suggest that organizing a lesson plan like a story is an effective way to help students comprehend and remember.” (p. 71)
Creating story lines and scenarios that make sense can make children more excited to learn but ultimately will guarantee that most of the kids will actually understand the lesson. If the students aren’t set up for success by not giving them context it will be very difficult for them to learn. It would be difficult for anyone to try and make sense of nothing at all. So it’s important for teachers to set up the learning environment so that kids can get the most out of it and feel challenged. I think implementing this in the games will be helpful especially if kids are constantly being thrown into different situations. If they have a clear story to go off of then the learning experience may be easier.
“Discovery learning has much to recommend it, when it comes to memory. If students have a strong voice in deciding which problems they want to work on, they will likely be engaged in the problems they select, and will likely think deeply about the material, with attention benefits. An important downside, however, is that what students will think about is less predictable.” (p.87)
This is an interesting quote to pick from because it offers two different ideas. Letting kids have the freedom to choose what they learn can be essential to learning. But if they always have the choice to do what they want it isn’t always teaching them that other subjects/ideas matter. It’s important to build routines for children but school is also a safe place to introduce real life problems in a beneficial way. If it’s always the same routine they won’t learn how to deal with minor problems that pop up later in life. This is important, especially in a game, to try and offer kids the opportunity to put their own spin on the games but also create different scenarios and curveballs that make the game more interesting.
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