What is incidental learning? Incidental learning takes place when a child is engaged in a task that’s basically fun. This isn’t something normally connected with math. During the course of the activity the child is really obtaining understanding and knowledge almost without realising it, as a form of by-product of the enjoyable experience in which they are engaged. Check out reading program for 3 year toddlers by visiting our website.
Perhaps the best kind of incidental learning happens when youthful children are engaged in activities that may best be described as play. The trick is to draw the understanding they have developed incidentally to the level of conscious awareness so they take conscious possession of what they have united nations-consciously learnt.
This really is in contrast to setting obvious learning objectives at the start of a lesson that is itself a great practice and incredibly commonplace in schools. Incidental learning possibilities present much more of challenging for the teacher and for that reason tend to be much less common.
I’d reason that much of our learning is non-conscious. Schools, for instance, take advantage of displays to communicate information to children. This sort of ‘information immersion’ can be used to good effect by advertisers. Imagine how easily children ‘learn’ a tune or pop-song. Television may also be a resource of incidental learning although, as with displays, of the more passive variety. Incidental learning is much more effective when children are positively engaged in the process.
Earlier I involved my students in learning science through the medium of drama. It demonstrated very effective and the children involved understood and retained very difficult concepts because they have been positively involved in a thrilling time.
I have to confess my inspiration with this project was attracted from a chapter of Sergeant Bilko titled ‘Platoon In The Movies’ where Bilko commandeered a video camera and produced their own movie titled ‘The Little Spark Plug’ featuring Doberman as the plug. Colonel Hall’s wife am enraptured that they managed to recite verbatim how to change a spark plug much to the colonel’s astonishment.
Although ‘playing’ with the rods youthful children may have made many important breakthroughs:
Rods of the same color are also equal in length.
Rods of the same length are equal in color.
Rods of different colors have different lengths.
It’s possible to make equal lengths by putting some rods finish to finish.
Some children will start to demonstrate an awareness of the commutative property of addition in an initial phase. e.g. red plus yellow equals yellow plus red (r y = y r ) or numerically (although number isn’t introduced at this time) 2 5 = 5 2
In by doing this children will start to acquire their number bonds without realizing it. They will avoid the horrible necessity of relying on fingers because they will ‘see’ figures as whole entities and never a mixture of disparate units. For more information on children-learning-reading-review, visit our website today!
In a later stage, when they are requested what two figures make ten or ‘what can i add to 1, 2, 3… to make ten’, children will be able to visualize the pattern. Fingers will certainly not be needed!
In our next article we start to explore the outcomes of math and language development as we introduce the vocabulary children will require to express their creation in an itemized form.