Repeat after me, class…

SQE has always supported direct instruction followed by lots of practice as an important part of ensuring that fundamental skills become automatic.  Dr. Hung-Hsi Wu’s article, reprinted in the SQE Forum, talks about how mastery of basic skills is essential to conceptual understanding. Seems that rote learning is not so bad after all. 

This article on HechingerEd supports more rote memorization as a means to understanding.  Watch the video below to see a three-year old recite the poem “Litany.”  Before you think this kid is merely another precocious parlor trick, the author says, “Notice what the young child’s intonation on certain lines reveals: he hasn’t learned this poem ‘without thought of the meaning; in a mechanical way’ - Random House’s definition of ‘rote’ learning. He’s wiser and more aware of what he’s saying than many of us might initially think.”

Rote learning is good for students because it’s challenging, good exercise for the brain (which is probably good for us at any age!), and the ability to gain new insight is enhanced.

                 “It’s only with multiple readings, viewings and hearings, then, that we actually begin to understand, see and hear. We’re deaf and blind in our first encounters with things.  And this is why practice matters so much as well. It’s our chief hope for transcending mediocrity.”

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