Methods at SSA: Filling in Knowledge Gaps

• Every student has gaps in their knowledge. It’s our job to fill those holes!

• Why teach what the student already knows? We take care to know where each student might have knowledge gaps so that we can best help them.

• Find out more on our blog!

Thinking Critically Helps Students Retain Information!

Filling in the holes

Possibly the most important part of our general teaching philosophy is thinking of every kid as pieces of swiss cheese. Swiss cheese has a lot of holes, and every piece is a little bit different - the holes are in different spots and they’re different sizes - but every piece is still swiss cheese. Similarly, every one of our kids starts off with knowledge gaps in slightly different places, but basically knows about the same overall amount.

Know what the student doesn't

My job is to recognize where the child’s knowledge gaps are and help fill those in. So my progression is to start with swiss cheese and take it to American. But I don’t want to just give the student everything that they need to know about a particular concept, because that’s information overload and they already know a lot of it. Why would I waste time imparting information that kids already know? So I’m going to focus on just filling in those swiss cheese holes.

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Stay tuned for more tips on increasing retention! For more studying and test-prep tips, check out our blog: https://www.socraticsummeracademy.com/blog.

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