“Abstraction is the goal of schooling. The teacher wants students to be able to apply classroom learning in new contexts, including outside school. The challenge is that the mind seems not to care for abstractions. The mind seems to prefer the concrete. That’s why, when we encounter an abstract principle— for example, mass X acceleration— we ask for a concrete example to help understand. The cognitive principle that guides this chapter is: We understand new things in the context of things we already know, and most of what we know is concrete. Thus, it is difficult to comprehend abstract ideas and difficult to apply them to new situations. The surest way to help students understand an abstraction is to expose them to many different versions of this abstraction— that is, to have them solve area calculations about tabletops, soccer fields, envelopes, doors, and so on. There are some techniques that can hurry this process.”
How will your game get students to think about key abstract concepts in many concrete ways?
Our game includes multiple different ways culture, economics, and geography can impact continents. Not only does our game ask about these ways but also how they change a continent. The students will have to mimic different cultures and attitudes when given real current event issues.
Two techniques or strategies to help your students to think about abstract ideas in your game.
Concrete Concepts:
Willingham recommends that when being taught a new lesson concrete examples should be used at first and then these concepts should be faded into more. For example, when learning about a new concept in math simple equations should be used. Then as you move on more complex equations should be brought in and these concrete concepts should fade away. In our game, we can use the opportunity to build up knowledge. We can first remind the kids of basic knowledge ideas that are concrete and then bring in more complex questions that actually apply concrete ideas to more full knowledge.
Transfer of Knowledge:
Willingham writes about how when given two problems to read children can understand at least one of them. Then the knowledge of the first one can help transfer understanding to the second one once understood. In the game, students will be able to transfer their knowledge from previous knowledge they saw in their classes this year. They have done a lot of learning on US history so we can use this game as a way to show kids a deeper understanding of US history. That way it might help the kids be introduced to more complex knowledge with the transfer of already known knowledge.
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