Ask them to explain what they are learning in their own words.

Experiments suggest that self-explanation can help children grasp concepts, learn procedures, and transfer knowledge to new situations.

But it's important to provide kids with the right support.

In one experiment, people asked to watch and explain a computer’s moves became better players than did people who simply observed the computer’s moves (de Bruin et al 2006).

Similarly, the act of explanation may help students may improve their understanding of mathematics -- even if nobody else is listening.

In a study of 5-year-olds, Bethany Rittle-Johnson and her colleagues (2008) gave kids some pattern-detection problems to solve.

and kids were asked what comes next (e.g., a red spider).

Then they were asked to explain why the official answers were correct.

The researchers put another group of kids through the same procedure, but without asking them to explain?

Which group developed better pattern-detection abilities.

When given new puzzles to solve, the "explainers" performed better.

Other experiments suggest that asking children to explain makes them focus on causation.

When researchers have asked preschoolers to explain how a new device works, these children were subsequently more likely remember the unseen, causal properties of the device (Walker et al 2014; Legare and Lombrozo 2014).

If that's true, then we might expect self-explanation to be less helpful when kids are already well-informed about the concepts.

When researchers provided school-aged children with high-quality, concept-driven instruction in mathematics, kids received no added benefits from self-explanation (Rittle-Johnson 2008).

It isn't realistic to expect kids to rediscover major mathematical concepts on their own!

So if we don't provide kids with enough instruction in the underlying concepts, we shouldn't expect self-explanation to aid conceptual learning.

Some kids were given explicit instructions on a procedure to follow (e.g., "Add together 3+4+8, then subtract 8 from the sum...").

Others were simply asked to discover their own procedure.

Neither group of kids got instruction in the underlying concept of equivalence.

Afterwards, half the kids in each group were asked to provide explanations for their solutions. The researchers found that self-explanation helped reinforce a child's mastery of the procedures, and it helped kids apply their procedures to new problems.

But kids didn't show an improved understanding of why the procedures worked?

We've seen that kids benefit from trying to explain.

experiment for 5-year-olds, Rittle-Johnson and colleagues found that self-talk helped kids learn.

The students were given a passage to read and randomly assigned to one of three conditions:.

Of course, we can't assume that kids would benefit in the same way that college students do.

Kids were given a chance to try to.

The kids who were asked to teach were twice as likely to solve the problem on their own.

If there are abstract concepts to learn, don't expect kids to.

Help kids develop high-quality explanations by modeling, or providing partial answers.

might first walk your child through an example that you solve and explain.

Ask kids to explain why correct information is correct.

Most experiments of self-explanation have asked students to explain a.

kids to explain why such errors are wrong.

explain the nature of the mistake.

reasoning can help students better understand correct reasoning.

Exploring mathematics problems prepares children to learn from instruction.

self-explanation and direct instruction

mathematics Learning and Instruction 12(2): 233-26. 

Content of "How kids learn math and science" last modified 11/2017