Pace of learning

Observation:
Age : 8 yrs

It is almost impossible to find out what the child has learnt and how much he has learnt when he/she is offered to learn through experiences. But it is possible at least to find out what we intend the child to learn minimum from what we offer. So there are different check points to find out whether we are really helping them to learn what we intend.

This Child comes for 5-7 age group sessions. First few classes there were no clue whether she was understanding anything at all or not. All our check points failed. It was almost like calling the parent and saying look there is some problem... we don't know how to handle. It was difficult to take that call as this method intended to help children learn in their own pace and in their own style. It was kind of a challenge to observe some more time patiently and see why this method does not work. 3 months passed the child definitely showed progress but still there was an element of doubt. Today it was clarified.

The child was offered to perform any number of experiments from the set she had covered so far. Child went on taking one after the other and had the explanation ready for the observations with each experiment. She did 5 experiments on her own remembering the steps for all in 1 hr. That was incredible compared to what we assessed the child in the first few sessions.

Views: It is very important to give the required space and time for a child to learn in her/his own pace especially till the child is settled. Also, our immediate assessment of a child need not be actual.