How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

Petruchio

As a teacher, I wonder if it is possible to instill this skill into students the skills of rationality and critical thinking. I teach the third grade, and it is not immediately apparent how to apply this with my own class.

The problems I foresee are as follows:

Young children often do not know the basics on the subject which they are learning, be it math, science, art, religion, literature etc.
Many children are very shy, and try to give as short of an answer as doable to a verbal prompt.
Written prompts are arduous, straining the attention span and writing capabilities of the students. This is not a bad thing, but it presents difficulties in the economy of time and material to be presented.
Attention spans in general are very short.
Experiments can be very infrequent, and nigh impossible with certain subjects.
Children, at this age, are likely to take the words of a parent or teacher at face value, and naturally parrot it back. This may be a hard habit to break.

In the sequences, it is suggested teachers should drill into students words don't count, only anticipation-controllers. How practical is this for an elementary school level? Also appreciated would be any ideas or experiences on how to do this, or how to combat the above problems. Hearing from other teachers would be excellent especially.

The problems I foresee are as follows:

Young children often do not know the basics on the subject which they are learning, be it math, science, art, religion, literature etc.
Many children are very shy, and try to give as short of an answer as doable to a verbal prompt.
Written prompts are arduous, straining the attention span and writing capabilities of the students. This is not a bad thing, but it presents difficulties in the economy of time and material to be presented.
Attention spans in general are very short.
Experiments can be very infrequent, and nigh impossible with certain subjects.
Children, at this age, are likely to take the words of a parent or teacher at face value, and naturally parrot it back. This may be a hard habit to break.

I recently spent a bunch of time realizing that memorizing multiplication tables, formulas, and random numerical facts about the world is a really good idea. (fermi estimation). I notice you need some theory to actually connect the memorized facts to reality, though.

What use is 5*5 = 25 is you don't know how to use numbers and recognize when multiplication is appropriate?

Maybe the trick is to get students to solve mostly complete world-connected problems so that they develop the skills of connecting the memorized procedures to something useful.

Still, as you say, at a sufficiently early stage in development, the students might not even be cognitively capable of connecting the facts to reality, but they need to memorize them for later.

I certainly learned "six times four is twenty four" before I learned anything approaching actual practical use of math.

I wonder what the simplest actual-practical-use-of-math is? Balancing a checkbook? Counting sheep? (I really ought not cite an essay I dislike so much).

P.S. At least math has basic facts that are worth memorizing. I'm still confused on what can usefully be learned in elementary school history class.

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How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

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How to Teach Students to Not Guess the Teacher’s Password?

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