The Sequence of Curricula is very interesting. I don’t think many of us would have thought that the different subject areas could be intertwined in such a way that a teacher could be teaching a variety of subjects all in one. This approach is innovative and can become a very useful and successful tool in the classroom.
Reading about the Laws of Exercise and Effect and other principals, I didn’t really understand the concept of Associative shifting, how its useful and how it can be applied to a learning environment.
If I am correct in interpreting Facilitating Transfer, this technique can be defined as having students do “hands on activities”. Everyone learns in different ways, some of us are visual learners, others are auditory and others are kinesthetic. And although each one may have its pros and cons, I strongly believe that one of the best methods of learning is the hands on approach because if we get a student involved in what we are trying to teach them, they will be completely engaged and will learn so much better.
I found Guthrie’s methods for breaking habits very interesting. These include Threshold, Fatigue and Incompatible Responses. I’m not a teacher and have never worked in a classroom environment I am however a mother, and I’m just wondering if teacher’s today employ some of these methods when they have trouble getting students to pay attention in class. The techniques are very interesting because from a teacher’s point a view, you use them to break the student out of a habit, but from a student perspective it’s almost like your getting away with the “unwanted” habit; for example, a six year old child might think its fun to build the paper airplanes and is happy that the teacher has allowed him to build as many as he wants; without realizing that in fact the teacher is using the “Incompatible Response” technique to break the child out of an undesirable habit.
