HOW DO CHILDREN LEARN?

A teacher must have the tools to teach, therefore he needs to have a mastery of the subject matter. He also needs to know educational methods and educational principles. These are the tools that are necessary plus he must have a knowledge of the mental activity of the student. A person who teaches has to know how the student learns in order to use the knowledge he has to have the student learn, he has to choose a method of teaching. A teacher always needs a method of teaching. When he teaches he has to be sure his thoughts are reaching the student and needs to encourage and stimulate the student to learn.

When a child is born there is so much potential as he knows nothing and is unable to do much. If his brain is normal he has the mechanisms for learning. Of those mechanisms of the brain there are receptors that are the end-organs of the senses that receive stimulation. There are also effectors, the muscles that receive and use the current sent from conductions called nerves, or neurones, that carry the nerve impulses from place to place. Nerve impulses aroused by the reception of stimuli are carried from the receptors, which are located in all parts of the body, to the central system, which includes the brain, the mid-brain, and the spinal cord.

There are three levels of action an impulse will take in its passage from neurone to neurone through the central system depending upon the resistance offered at the synapse. These pathways might be grouped in three levels. There is a reflex level and in this level the degree of relationship is so close that a given impulse brought in over a certain neurone to a specific end-brush always goes to the same dendrite, the result is reaction on this lowest level. In this, connections in the spinal cord are used. The second level is called instinctive reaction, a type of action resulting from the relationship at the synapse being not so close or simple, yet enough so that the general character of the automatic reactions will be the same. The third level of reaction is the level of acquired connections. Reactions on this level are usually less prompt, and easier to modify.

Children also learn through play