Learning is a process Essay

Learning is a process, which requires mental capability for it to happen. There are various means by which learning takes place for example there is observational learning, intuition, or through experience. Learning is a continuous process, which happens throughout the life of a person. In education, learning takes place from the time one starts attending a classroom. This paper reflects on the experience that I have had on teaching student to learn. At the first instance, this is not an easy process because it involves making a student open up his or her mind so that grasping of the instruction can take place well in the mind. Most students find it difficult to learn out of many reasons. One of the reason I have realized make students fail to learn how to read fast is fear. Most of them have fear to make a mistake as they start reading. This fear hinders them from attaining degree of learning that they are supposed. Another factor that affects the rate of how children learn to read is the rate of mental development (Arends & Kilcher, 2009). This is because children have different rates of mental development. Those children who learn to read faster than the others are the ones who have faster rate of mental development. I have learned that it is difficult to teach children in the same classroom due to the different rates by which the children learn. Therefore, what I do is to attend to individual students. This allows those children with low rate of learning to feel embarrassed by other who are able to learn first. This also helps the students who are quick learners not to feel dragged by their counterparts who are slow learners. Another thing that I have noticed about students as they learn to read is that they do not like so much supervision. When the students are given freedom to learn more by themselves they tend to learn faster than when as a teacher I try to push them and giving them direction on how to learn. Freedom helps them to be more open to the learning process as they feel they are not intimidated. They also find time to challenge each other as they try to memorize the words they have learned to read. I have found that the best way to enhance learning to students is to allow them do much of the learning by themselves. The work of the teacher would be to give directions, guide them, and then allow them to take charge. The students also learn faster when they are allowed to learn in groups. This allows the students to assist each other to learn some of the difficult things when they are free. Children always feel embarrassed when you show them, for example, to read some words but the following day they have forgotten. I have realized that this can make a student even take longer time to learn because of this embarrassment. So I realized that the best thing a teacher can do to prevent this is to start with the most simple concepts of learning, then move slowly to the more difficult ones. By this, the student mind develops, as the concepts become more difficult (Burns & Sandra, 2004). Slowly by slowly the student is able to grasp even difficult concepts without much difficulty. A student also needs a lot of encouragement and praise even if he or she fails to understand what is being taught. This acts as a motivating factor to a student to work harder. References Arends, R. & Kilcher, A. (2009) Teaching for Student Learning, Taylor and Francis. Burns, T. & Sandra, S. (2004). Teaching, learning and study skills: a guide for tutors, New York, SAGE, 2004