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 agree that experiments in school tend to be downright TERRIBLE. THere is never, even in a wealthy enviroment, enough time, equipment, or whatever to let students make any more than trivial choices in experimental design -- and I would say that knowing what experiment to perform is downright essential.

My main opinion is that we should not teach so many scientific facts in high school, and more rationality and scientific method, using that as a hook for specific disciplines. Chemistry is pretty good because you can get into some nice empirical predictions and deconstructionism without much difficult math.

A lot of labs in high schools are not even all that experimental, and the hypothesis is always crystal clear.

THere is never, even in a wealthy enviroment, enough time, equipment, or whatever to let students make any more than trivial choices in experimental design

We have art classes in which there's plenty of time for the students to create artwork. In a similar context there no reason why there shouldn't be experimention classes that teach students to experiment and give them plenty of time for the exercise.

School wastes massive amounts of time by teaching facts without SRS that get forgotten by the students a few years after they take the class. Learning the paradigm of experimentation might be more important then teaching the way the periodic table is arranged.

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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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