In this article, we look to provide homeschooling teachers and students with reasons why a change in focus with their educational strategies in education can help to bring success to the classroom.
How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens
Change Focus with Your Approaches towards Educational Strategies
By changing focus with your approaches towards educational strategies, we mean approaches that will help students build critical thinking skills as well as their problem solving skills.
For teachers, the shift of focus in educational strategies should be from WHAT we teach, to the HOW we teach, so that students can understand WHY they should learn the subject.
For students, the shift of focus in building critical thinking skills should be from WHAT we learn, to HOW we learn, so that students can understand WHY they should learn the subject.
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How Does A Change In Focus Helps Teachers and Students?
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When there is change of focus towards the subject (or how we look at the subject), then things become much easier for both teachers and students in the classroom.
When teachers change the focus from what the subject is, to how the subject is to be understood, it makes it easier for students to understand why the subject is beneficial.
Teachers then can use effective instructional strategies to give students a greater chance for building critical thinking skills and success in meeting their educational goals.
The connection between learning and classroom management and how teachers can maximize the learning potential of students helps keep their focus in the classroom.
Educational Focus In Math
Math is one subject where students need to see it as important to life, even if the topics make no connections to real life.
Teachers in teaching math should use logical strategies that show students how math helps everything we do in life, from cooking, to building their own business.
When students recognize that they are build life skills when they build their math skills, then their focus and opinion of math can change for the better.
Note: In this blog we will reference the subject, but in doing so we also imply topics and lesson plans used to in teaching the subject.
5 Reasons For A Change Of Focus In Educational Strategies
The five reasons why we, at The ETI Academy believe a change of focus in educational strategies will benefit and teachers students in building critical thinking skills and life skills that will stay with them forever.
The old Chinese proverb provides a good example of how skills bring success., The proverb states; give a person a fish, that person eats for a day, teach that person how to fish, and that person eats for a lifetime.
By changing the focus to HOW, we can better appreciate the WHAT, and the WHY as it relates to teaching and learning.
This change helps improve understanding in the classroom between teachers and students, and helps students gain those top scores in school.
The 5 reasons below meant to benefit teachers with their teaching strategies and help students with their learning strategies, and are as follows;
This article is meant to benefit teachers at any stage in their careers, including pre-service teachers. For more on how to master teaching strategies for pre-service teachers, click here.
I. Fosters Greater Enjoyment Towards Learning
Teacher education courses will often discourage teacher lesson plans that indicate the teacher will directly state “Today we will be learning about…”.
But instead encourage lessons plans that use creative ways (mind maps perhaps) to get students thinking about the subject in more unique and interesting ways.
By shifting the focus in educational strategies from what the subject is all about, to how students can benefit from being introduced to the subject, students can then grow to appreciate it and enjoy why they have been introduced to such a subject.
II. Builds Stronger Connections to Learning
Which brings us to the next reason, to help students connect with the subject. When we connect with something or a subject, we associate positive emotions and feel comfortable when facing the tasks associated with teaching or learning a subject.
Once teachers and students find their rhythm with how they teach and learn, they may have a greater appreciation and connection towards the subject.
When are able to help others build their own confidence and enthusiasm for the subject, they no longer feel any anxiety attached to teaching or learning.
III. Reduces Anxiety
One popular reason students avoid certain subjects is because of the high degree of anxiety they attaching to learning the material.
They simply will state that they do not enjoy what they are learning.
When students are presented with reasons as to how the subject is beneficial to learning and how they can find non-traditional ways of understanding the subject, then they may grasp a better understanding of why they should learn the subject.
Once students become more aware of the how and why associated with the subject, this then reduces their anxiety towards learning what the subject has to offer.
IV. Improves Learning Skills
Reducing anxieties means teachers and students can focus on other issues, namely improving learning skills.
How we learn improves many of the skills companies look for in potential employees.
As students learn to recognize from teachers and eventually on their own how the subject they are learning can add value to their lives, they can work on building important learning skills such as problem solving, communication, organization, and time management skills.
These learning skills eventually become recognized as the soft skills companies in the real world look for in potential employees.
V. Establish A Connection With The Real World
Great teachers know that it’s not enough to keep students thinking just about what they are learning. They will reference Bloom’s taxonomy when asking questions.
Students will value the subject more when they understand that how they learn in school can transition easily into how they learn to do their job in the real world.
Related Topics
Connect to our other pages as you navigate through our website. Explore what these pages have to offer you and you will be glad you did!
- Click to read more on how to improve your critical thinking skills
- Learn more about the topic of social emotional learning
- Click to read fun and exciting ways to help students build strategies for online learning
- Visit our student blogs to see what strategies work best for learning
- Read more about the connections between emotions and learning
- Get ready for back to school with these six important tips.
- Learn how to stay motivated in the homeschool classroom
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Final Thoughts…
It is easy to see how physical health activities help the body, so it’s important for students to see how subjects help the mind.
When individuals are able to find the benefits in all they do for themselves in life, they become healthier individuals.
When we understand the benefits to how we eat, what we eat and why we eat makes for a healthier lifestyle. The same goes for education.
Teachers educate students to become independent speakers, and thinkers.
By ensuring that with every new lesson, on every new topic, in every new subject, students are made aware of how they can benefit from learning, students will come to realize that their academic success comes easier.
It can help them reach educational success in turning their passions for learning into achievable goals.
Once they graduate, it can bring financial success by bringing benefit to their communities and the world in general.
Teachers also benefit because of how much easier lesson planning gets when the focus is more on how will I teach, rather than what I will teach the students.
With time and experience, the teacher will see that the focus does not need to be on what I teach or where I teach, but how I teach that will benefit the teacher and students in the long run.
It’s been said that as the years pass, students may not remember what the teacher taught them, but they will always remember how the teacher made them feel.
In teaching when we look at how we approach a lesson both in knowledge, and compassion, it is something that students will remember for years to come.
Share Your Thoughts
Let us hear your thoughts on our reasons for changing the focus in education and whether you agree or disagree with our reasons.
