More About Spontaneous Learning

Spontaneous Learning is the best! It must be:

Recognized – teachers MUST learn to look for this and realize when this happens
Respected – this is REAL learning – the step beyond rote memory and ‘normal’ expectations – this is hitting the jackpot in learning!
Rewarded with attention – this is to be treated with smiles and wows!
Reinforced with further widening opportunities for use – do again and do different
Reflected – “Remember when the duck popped up today? How did that happen?
Repeated for practice – over and over until the child moves on
Reused by the child in new/original ways – more water play!
Reused by the teacher in the creation of new units of study and new experiences
Rated – documented as a successful reaching of a learning objective

These are Helen Keller Moments! – These moments of spontaneous learning, or discovery and brain growth in new and sometimes surprising ways, are like the moment in the book/play/movie, “The Miracle Worker”, when Helen Keller, deaf and blind from illness in infancy, has that incredible moment of clarity when her teacher, Annie Sullivan, puts Helen’s hands in water from the pump and Helen makes the connection between the sensation of the cold water to the word ‘water’ and then to the sign for ‘water’ that Sullivan has been trying to help her understand.

Often, moments like these are overlooked and undervalued, but they can be some of the strongest learning a child will gain because it is usually HIS learning – coming from his own discovery and experimentation rather than from a more formal teacher-led aspect. This OWNERSHIP makes the learning of higher quality because of its personal value to HIM.

Some teachers are so busy concentrating on the skill or concept they had planned to “TEACH” that they lose sight of what else the children can learn during the experience. It may be hard to think of ducky-dumping as great science, but that is exactly what it is. Ducky-dumping proves Archimedes’ Principle of fluid displacement – it is physics. It is learning.

Spontaneous learning is also part of the Abe Vygotsky learning theory of “webbing” which is about creating new learning from “old”. Webbing, or scaffolding, is one of the essences of REAL learning – moving from discovery to invention. 18 month old ducky-dumpers will dump over and over getting a clearer and clearer understanding of Archimedes’ Principle as they dump. They do not know Archimedes (and who really did?) and they may never know his principle, but they will have experienced the actual use of the scientific process of exploration-discovery-experimentation-use-invention.