How You Can Teach Your Child to Learn

The environment in which your child learns is just as important as, if not more than, what you teach your child. It's how you teach your child that will determine whether he or she will want to learn or not. A good teacher who knows how to teach so children will learn can always make a boring topic interesting (most of the time).

To discover the secret, we need to understand how children think and learn. We will look at the two Cognitive theorists that have influenced the field of cognitive development.

Piaget and Discovery Learning

Piaget believed that children learn by interacting with their environment. This means that the teacher sets up the learning environment so that children can discover for themselves through interacting with their surroundings. 

The activities are set up to encourage exploration. It is not random activities either but well thought out learning experiences that build on children's current level of thinking. Since children develop at different rates, the activities are not one size fit all but rather there are different activities set up for individuals or small groups of children.

What this means for you as a parent is to think about where your child is at in his current thinking and then think about what he needs to learn. Next, find activities that are hands-on and that will encourage your child to explore and discover for himself that bit of learning. 

Vygotsky and Cooperative Learning

Vygotsky believed that children learn by interacting with others. This means that not only does the teacher sets up the environment that encourages discovery but it also allows students to learn from others. This is called assisted discovery. So the children's peers assist each other in teaching and learning.

This is where the idea of reciprocal teaching and cooperative learning came from. Children working in groups and helping each other as they discuss, plan and problem solve. The teacher's role in this is to set up the learning activities and groups and making sure that children are on track guiding them where necessary. 

As a parent, what this means is that you need to find suitable peer groups for your child to engage in a problem solving activity of discovery. If you have different aged children, then you'd need to make sure that the elder ones don't take over the lead and tell the younger ones what to do. Give each one a clear role that they can be the 'expert' of so they can lead in that area. 

These are just one aspect of Piaget and Vygostsky's contribution to how children think and learn.

To read more about Piaget and Vygotsky, keep a look out for my new book on child development that I'm co-authoring with other experts in the field. Subscribe below to get an update on when it'll be released and other teaching and learning tips.

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