Meritxell Monguillot

We only learn what we think about. Laura outlines several strategies in this post that will help ensure students are actively thinking about what you are teaching them. Great stuff.

Not to go the opposite direction but my least favorite RP question is what do you remember from yesterday’s lesson. It’s a low hanging fruit question. Meaning Ss recall the most accessible thing not the things they can’t yet remember. I mention bc a brain dump could risk a bit of the low hanging fruit factor if u weren’t careful. One study found that w retrieval specific questions were better than general questions and I think that’s one reason why. Obviously sharing this as a huge fan of your teaching.

The most powerful tool in any field is the ability to break a large problem into small, solvable pieces.

One reason automaticity matters is that it reduces cognitive load. When lower-level skills become effortless, working memory is freed for higher-level reasoning. This is one of the main ways mathematical development becomes possible. It's not just a minor convenience.

The most efficient way to strengthen knowledge is often not to keep repeating it in isolation. It is to continue building on top of it. The more connections a piece of knowledge has, the more ingrained, organized, and retrievable it becomes. That is one reason serious mathematical development should not feel like a sequence of disconnected units. It should feel like a growing structure.

A scaffold that remains in place too long ceases to be a scaffold and becomes a crutch. Support matters. But so does knowing when support should begin to disappear.