Resources for Educators

Teaching Tip

From the Teacher’s Aide Newsletter

2014 July

The One Who Does the Teaching, Does the Learning…

An educational axiom is: To best learn something, one should teach it.

Well, that means that teachers are always the ones learning, especially if they do most of the talking and demonstrating in the classroom. Try turning your classroom into a teaching clinic. Give your students a few basics to get started toward your learning objective(s), and then pair them up (or place them in groups) and have them teach each other. Tell them that you expect them to come up with at least three different ways to learn each objective. Getting it “right” is not the point here, so let them experiment.

The real objective, of course, is the critical thinking and attention required in an experimental environment. And you up the ante when you make the students responsible for each other’s learning by teaching it.