Kinesthesis in Science :: Graduate Admissions Essays

Kinesthesis in Science   Especially to the uninitiated, learning erudition can be daunting. A primary contri furtherion to this problem is the detail that too often intelligence lectures are overly beal, and they employ a notation--namely the language of math-which ostensibly is transparent to only an elite few. The belief arsehole my remedy to this difficulty is that any physical problem, as well as all of the associated formalism, can be rendered not only intelligible but even pleasurable if the student first achieves a gut comprehend of the physical situation. Put plainly, all of the math in any science class makes sense if the student first has an intuitive mental cinema of exactly what is going on. Once this physical limn is in place, it serves as a framework upon which the formal intercession can hang. And when the formal treatment flows intelligibly with a students gut picture of the situation, the subsequent sense of appreciation is no less than thrilling. &nb sp So how to instill this essential physical picture? I have found that getting students up come on of their chairs and physically acting out a problem, though it may feel ridiculous, is an incredibly effective tool for instilling a gut-level physical intuition rough any scientific situation. Need to understand tides? Link hands and form a circle to represent the Earths hydrosphere. Pick volunteers for the sun and the moon. Distort the charitable hydrosphere appropriately, then let each student stand in the middle, creation the Earth, physically witnessing the succession of high and low tides. Though it may take care laughable at first glance, actually acting out a given situation instills the physical sense of why behind the formalism to come. Once this instinct is in place, the rest of the discussion is well-motivated, and the formalism leave behind make sense. Moreover, it is very unlikely that a student will embarrass one of these exercises. I have found that retention o f material so introduced is near perfect.   As an ancillary benefit, the mere fact that the students are out of their seats during these human models, moving and laughing and bumping into each other, serves extraordinarily effectively to obliterate the impetus against asking questions in the classroom. The students have already tangle silly and seen their instructor acting silly. In that respect, everyone is on equal footing, and the classroom becomes a safe environment for verbalizing concerns. Additionally, the enhanced physical and verbal interaction involved in kinesthetic modeling enormously smoothes the implementation of accommodative learning, since the ice, so to speak, has long been broken.