BJU Press Blog

comprehension

Teaching for Joy in Learning

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teaching for a joy of learning
Have you seen that brief animation of the learning process at a government school? I mean the one where a student, who’s sitting upright in a small, traditional desk, moves along a conveyor belt. At the student’s first stop, a robotic arms saws off the top of his cranium, revealing a light bulb. At the next stop, a robotic arm wielding a hammer smashes the lightbulb. And at the final stop, a robotic arm bestows a graduation cap. The process continues on and on with child after child moving through the “educational” process at government schools. This system was not designed for teaching children to take joy in learning.

This animation illustrates a critical fact: educational approaches have impacts on educational outcomes. So what outcome do we want for our children? We want them to think biblically about all of life. We also want them to receive the joy they can expect from their calling. In past blog posts, we’ve explored the scriptural reasons for expecting that our children can have this kind of joy. We’ve also examined reasons why our children’s experiences may be anything but joyful. While some of those reasons relate to factors inside our children, today we want to focus on the factors that we as parents and the educators of our children are responsible for. We need to create educational experiences for our children that most closely conform to how children learn.

When it comes to encouraging learning, I don’t have a comprehensive list of best teaching practices or foolproof methods. I hope to keep learning as my wife and I continue on our homeschool journey. But here are some effective approaches for teaching a joy of learning I’ve learned so far.

1. Teaching Joy with Understanding-Based Learning

Learning that focuses on understanding instead of performance cultivates joy in learning. It can be incredibly satisfying to have a child who performs off the charts on a standardized test or who can recite the Roman emperors’ names from memory. Your child might perform well on paper, but what about his or her understanding? If performance is what we’re aiming for, then we’re not concerned about children’s understanding, just their ability to memorize and regurgitate information. And what we get is children who do well on tests but can’t apply what they’ve learned. Unless they’re also focused on performance, then children who just learn for the grade get bored or frustrated.

Instead, we should be interested in comprehension. When a child understands math, it’s not only easier to learn, but the child has the tools to use math effectively. That’s why breaking out math manipulatives or engaging in other hands-on activities is so powerful. Understanding-based learning is the bridge to higher levels of learning. And Scripture reminds us that “knowledge is easy to him who understandeth” (Proverbs 14:6).

2. Sequenced Learning

Putting learning in the proper order, or sequence, prepares your child for the next step. When children have all the pieces they need for understanding at the time they need them, they’re equipped to find joy in learning. Has someone ever explained something to you, assuming that you already knew something that you didn’t know? Maybe there was important information that you’d never learned. When that happens to me, I get confused and frustrated. I want to stop.

In the kitchen, we wouldn’t ask our children to add three eggs to a mixture until we had taught them how to crack an egg. It’s often easy to approach learning by jumping around from topic to topic without a plan in mind.

With sequenced learning, our goal is to challenge our children without frustrating them. We plan each step carefully so that they have prior experiences and the knowledge they need so that they can take the next step in learning. I love it when my daughter encounters a familiar concept that has added depth and complexity to it. She’s seen it before, but it looks new to her. The new information is more challenging than what she learned before, but it is simple because of her prior experience with the topic.

3. Authentic Learning

Another way of teaching a joy in learning by focusing on the purpose for learning instead of the test. Has your child ever asked, “Will that be on the test?” It’s often an expression of frustration. Instead of taking joy in the experience of learning new things, he or she just wants to know how to pass the class. At that point, your child is probably just overwhelmed by all the extra, seemingly unnecessary information. Children also express this frustration when they ask, “When will I ever use this?”

When we teach our children, we need to regularly show them the real world application of what they’re learning. When learning is relevant to their lives, it becomes real and authentic. They can use math at the grocery story. Or they can apply what they studied in science to make a ramp to move a heavy object. Or take spelling, for example. If we give our children a list of random spelling words to recite back on their test, they’re likely going to get bored or frustrated, and they won’t remember it beyond the test. But when part of their spelling assignment is to proofread someone else’s writing, it’s authentic. They see how spelling is relevant and useful.

When children start to use their learning, they’re exercising good and wise dominion in this world. That is one of the purposes that God has given mankind. And it is the reason we educate our children.

The choices we make in teaching our children will have an incredible impact on how they view learning. If we don’t aim for comprehension, if we teach things out of order, or if we don’t give them a reason for learning, then we won’t be teaching them to have joy in learning. We’ll be crippling their joy of learning, instead. We need to choose teaching methods that support our children. Then we will be able to see the light of joy in our children’s eyes as they’re learning.

Comprehending Comprehension

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Comprehension

Many homeschool curricula claim to encourage comprehension in children, but what does it mean to comprehend something?

Comprehension is a group of skills that we use to relate language to meaning. The ability to comprehend takes place on four levels: literal (recognizing and remembering information); interpretive (receiving information from statements through analysis and synthesis; making inferences); critical (evaluating and making judgments about statements); and creative (appreciating and responding emotionally to statements). Taken together, these four levels make up total comprehension, which means that a child understands what he has read, even if he doesn’t know everything about it.

Essentially, this group of skills reveals Bloom’s taxonomy for the cognitive domain. (See “Applying Bloom’s Taxonomy” for more information on this topic.)

Does a curriculum emphasize “comprehension” by requiring a student to retain and repeat information or to pronounce words accurately? Or does it require the student to use information in real-life situations (application)? Break down information into a simpler form (analysis)? Put information together with other facts to form conclusions (synthesis)? Pass judgment on the validity of ideas (evaluation)? All of these activities make up total comprehension—relating language, the printed material on the page, to meaning.

Here’s a fun illustration of these levels of comprehension based on Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky.” Read the following lines from Carroll’s poem, and then consider the questions below.

Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

  • What did the slithy toves do in the wabe?
  • Fill in the blank: The borogoves were _____.
  • What things were outgrabing?

If your child answers the questions correctly, has he comprehended the material? In the limited sense of literal comprehension, yes, because he has accurately retained and repeated the information.

To find out whether he can relate language to meaning in this case, you could ask different kinds of questions like the following:

  • How can you help someone be mimsy tomorrow? (application)
  • Explain how a tove becomes slithy. (analysis)
  • Which is better, outgrabing or gimbling? (evaluation)
  • Did the poem make you feel brillig? Why or why not? (appreciation)

Of course, the child cannot answer any of these questions (and neither can you!) because the nonsensical nature of the words makes it impossible to get beyond the level of literal comprehension.

You must decide whether the narrow or the broad approach to comprehension (literal versus total) supports your family’s philosophy of education. If you want your child to read eloquently at an early age, to memorize math facts, and to recite dates in history, then stress performance over understanding. This curriculum will reflect the narrow definition of comprehension—literal level only.

But if you want your child to know not only how to read but also what he is reading, to see the concepts as well as the facts in math, and to discern and apply the lessons of history, then stress understanding over performance. This curriculum will be designed with total comprehension as the goal.

By determining your family’s educational philosophy first and then examining the curricula available, you can more wisely choose the one that helps your family achieve the kind of education you are working for.

BJU Press textbooks strive to promote total comprehension in each child’s education. We want to encourage children to know not just how words relate to each other but to be able to interpret, evaluate, and respond to the ideas those words communicate.

Take a look inside our textbooks to get a better idea of how we encourage comprehension.

Are You Asking the Right Questions?

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Much of your child’s success in learning depends on the questions you ask him and how you ask them. Research shows undisputed benefits from asking questions to develop reading comprehension. These questions help children of all ages put what they’re learning into a context that they can discuss, and those who answer comprehension questions learn more subject matter than their peers who do not. Asking your child questions also helps him discover his own ideas. It also gives him an opportunity to explore his creativity and to sharpen critical-thinking skills.

But like most homeschooling parents, you already know the need to ask questions to ensure that your child is learning. In order to teach effectively, you also need to know that you’re asking the right kind of questions. Consider these steps to improving your questioning method.

1. Develop your child’s thinking skills by asking questions that go beyond content.

  • Use questions that require comparing, evaluating, and discerning. (Why? What if? What is the evidence? What are the alternatives? What are the implications? What do you think is right?)

2. Give your child time to answer.

  • Don’t expect an immediate response. Five or six seconds of silence is not much time to allow for a well-developed response.
  • Be willing to accept an unconventional answer. Don’t dismiss an answer simply because it didn’t use the terms in the way that you wanted. Your child may be thinking along the right lines but maybe unable to express the answer in the correct terms. Take the time to help your child restate his answer.

3. Help your child think toward the right answers.

  • If your child doesn’t understand the question or answers incorrectly, ask simpler questions that help build up to the question you asked initially. If your child has trouble explaining why a sentence is grammatically incorrect, ask about the functions of the words in the sentence (which word is the verb? Is it transitive or intransitive? If it’s transitive, doesn’t it require a direct object? Is there a direct object?).
  • Demonstrate for your child how you arrive at conclusions by walking him through your own questioning process (how you decided to make a difficult purchase or what leads you to endorse a particular political candidate).

If you help your child by demonstrating good questioning practices, he will not only learn course content but also learn how to ask questions in order to arrive at the answers for themselves. And isn’t that the whole point?

For more insights on questions, consider the discussion sections in our BJU Press curriculum Teacher’s Editions.

Q&A: Is a dedicated reading book necessary?

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If your family is like mine, you probably have books all over the house. Novels pile up as they get handed down from generation to generation and as children receive them as gifts. As a result, you might be wondering why you should buy your children a separate reading textbook that includes different reading selections (also called a basal reader) when you already have plenty of books around for them to read.

At BJU Press we strongly believe in the value of basal readers and publish one for nearly every grade. The rationale behind this can be summed up in three big ideas.

BasilReader_blog

1. A wide range of content exposes your child to many different genres.

We have a lot of storybooks at our house but not much nonfiction or poetry that would appeal to a younger audience. Basal readers ensure that children are being exposed to a variety of genres, including poetry, short stories, plays, letters, and more. Introducing these literary genres is important because every child has different interests. At the same time, basal readers also develop your child’s appreciation for many types of literature. It would be a shame for a child to dislike reading just because she dislikes the particular books available to her.

Keep in mind that a basal reader doesn’t replace novels entirely. By exposing your child to different genres, it provides a great opportunity to find out what he likes to read so you can buy more of those kinds of books.

2. Stories are selected to teach specific skills.

Reading in school should be fun and interesting, but that’s not the only objective. Children need to learn the foundational comprehension skills that they’ll need for the future. Stories and questions in the BJU Press basal readers are chosen intentionally because they illustrate literary concepts that are important for children to learn. Reading and Literature kits include both before and after reading questions that relate specifically to the story to ensure your child is comprehending what he’s reading, and isn’t just saying words out loud.

3. Stories are age and developmentally appropriate.

Ensuring that reading material is age and developmentally appropriate is an important part of keeping children challenged but not frustrated. There can be a lot of guesswork involved in trying to pick out stories for your child to read. You don’t want the vocabulary to be too hard, but at the same time if it’s too easy, your child won’t develop as he reads it. Basal readers include stories from a range of difficulties that are sequenced from less difficult to more difficult to ensure success for every reader.

Take a look at the reading selections included in our BJU Press Reading and Literature books.