Teaching by negative example addresses all your concerns.
No basic knowledge required. Logical guesses will serve.
Short answers are the right answers.
No writing required.
Story-problems can hold attention longer.
Experiments can be described as well as shown.
Opportunity to disagree with the teacher, a lesson in critical thinking in itself.
Here is what I mean in the abstract by teaching by negative example. Set up a situation that can be resolved or addressed using logic. Suggest or demonstrate the wrong answers. The students will (with gusto) tell you you are wrong. What’s left is the logical correct answer.
I have used this technique thousands of times when I was an interpreter / tutor for deaf students in mainstream K-12 schools. Most deaf young people have parents who do not sign. No ambient information from radio, little ambient information from television, the Internet is generally in English (a spoken / written language) not sign (a movement / time language). Sometimes the lack of background information is profound, all the way up to senior class in high school.
There is a challenge in presenting a new concept for which there is no equivalent sign. I sometimes succeeded in comparison (this new idea is similar to that known idea). I always succeeded in negative / opposite examples (this new idea is the opposite of that old idea, or is what this other thing is not, or is what remains when X Y and Z are not the case).
That sounds interesting, could you give a couple concrete examples of “wrong answers” that worked particularly well? Do you mean things like “All birds fly, a bee flies, therefore a bee is a bird”?
More like this:
Q what is a bee?
A A bee is a bee.
And there is stops because questions about groups or kinds of things (1) are lacking in background knowledge (2) are viewed as another dumb English thing—English has too many words for some things and not enough for others.
So I try this:
Q Is a bee a food?
A no
Q is a bee a place?
A no
Q what is a bee?
A a bee is a bug.
Logical structures that are factually false as you describe can be helpful too.
Teaching by negative example addresses all your concerns.
No basic knowledge required. Logical guesses will serve.
Short answers are the right answers.
No writing required.
Story-problems can hold attention longer.
Experiments can be described as well as shown.
Opportunity to disagree with the teacher, a lesson in critical thinking in itself.
Here is what I mean in the abstract by teaching by negative example. Set up a situation that can be resolved or addressed using logic. Suggest or demonstrate the wrong answers. The students will (with gusto) tell you you are wrong. What’s left is the logical correct answer.
I have used this technique thousands of times when I was an interpreter / tutor for deaf students in mainstream K-12 schools. Most deaf young people have parents who do not sign. No ambient information from radio, little ambient information from television, the Internet is generally in English (a spoken / written language) not sign (a movement / time language). Sometimes the lack of background information is profound, all the way up to senior class in high school.
There is a challenge in presenting a new concept for which there is no equivalent sign. I sometimes succeeded in comparison (this new idea is similar to that known idea). I always succeeded in negative / opposite examples (this new idea is the opposite of that old idea, or is what this other thing is not, or is what remains when X Y and Z are not the case).
That sounds interesting, could you give a couple concrete examples of “wrong answers” that worked particularly well? Do you mean things like “All birds fly, a bee flies, therefore a bee is a bird”?
More like this: Q what is a bee? A A bee is a bee. And there is stops because questions about groups or kinds of things (1) are lacking in background knowledge (2) are viewed as another dumb English thing—English has too many words for some things and not enough for others.
So I try this: Q Is a bee a food? A no Q is a bee a place? A no Q what is a bee? A a bee is a bug.
Logical structures that are factually false as you describe can be helpful too.