Create or Find a Stimulating Environment School and school classrooms can be so boring. I was always glad as a child to sit in a room with display cabinets or pictures or a notice board. I could be intrigued by the things on display, and let my imagination play with the ideas or items there. Hands-on items can be even better, especially for more concrete thinkers. In my study, where I tutor mathematics, I have a wide variety of items that students walk past to reach the desk where we work. I have bowls of coloured marbles, a Newton’s Cradle, an optical illusion involving a frog and mirrors, a telescope, an hourglass, a gas mask, puzzles made from plastic/wood/wire, a metronome, a drinking bird, a fish talk, a guitar, a chanter (for bagpipes), old books, plastic models (space shuttle etc.), a Babylonian clay tablet (replica), ancient arrow tips, an ancient oil lamp, my archery kit … and the list goes on. It is so enjoyable seeing the more tactile students engage with these things and a discussion ensues. We can discuss history, society, music, art, and all kinds of things as well as mathematics. Why do I mention this? I wish to share a TED Talks that has impressed me and has particular application to learning and education. The speaker is a remarkable woman, Barbara Arrowsmith-Young. Please scroll down and watch her whole talk before reading any further. I believe you will find it to be a most inspiring 14 minutes! -------- Please Watch the Video -------- Barbara’s story is inspiring. She has devoted her career to helping children with learning disabilities -- but you will notice that she says this cognitive learning is for everyone. As a young boy I stumbled upon this truth myself and will share part of my story. I am no genius but I was an able student. At about eleven or twelve years of age, inspired by my reading of the Greek philosophers I decided to try to improve my mind. One of the challenges that I set myself was to picture things (in colour) much more clearly than I was able to at that time. I distinctly remember lying on the ground under the clothes line in our back yard, shutting my eyes, and trying to see a simple pure colour. I think it was red — an easy colour to manage if the sun is shining on your eyes! I then tried to change it to total purple and then yellow and green and blue so that the colour was pure and even, without variation in tone or intensity in my whole field of ‘vision.’ This became a regular exercise for a few minutes per day until I could manage it at will. I then began to picture points, then coloured lines, then shapes, then shapes of different colours. In time, I could picture shapes quickly in different colours, overlap then and manipulate them. The next step was to picture three-dimensional objects — simple shapes at first. In time I could picture cubes and pyramids etc. with different colours on each face and rotate them about any axis and even move inside them and see the colours from the inside. Within a year or two I was able to play games of chess in my mind or place points on a torus (donut / doughnut) and join them with coloured lines (around and under) in a matter of seconds. Regrettably, I have let this skill lapse. I share it because I think, in a small way, it illustrates how our mind can be trained and can adapt and change with the right training. Let me encourage you to explore — explore the outdoors, libraries (every section), museums, local businesses, visit with and meet local people. Seek stimulation of a kind that will inspire you and then plan exercises to learn or develop new skills. Our brains are very adaptable. I strongly recommend mental exercises in mathematics, even in the senior school. Who says students shouldn’t train their minds to perform twenty quadratic factorisations in a minute or eight or ten basic integrals in a minute? Isn’t that our goal, to train minds? I would certainly rather engage in that exercise than spend twenty minutes writing the same material on paper (as long as I already knew how to present the material)! I will say no more at this stage. Barbara’s story (and my illustration) should be sufficient. Go and learn — even learn mathematics.
Posted on: Fri, 31 May 2013 13:20:31 +0000
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