What exactly is incidental learning? Incidental learning occurs when a child is engaged in an activity that is essentially fun. This is not something normally associated with math. While the procedure of the activity the child is for real acquiring knowledge and data practically without realising it, as a sort of by-product of the enjoyable touch in which they are engaged.
Math
Arguably the most productive kind of incidental learning takes place when young children are engaged in activities that can best be described as play. The trick is to draw the knowledge they have acquired incidentally to the level of aware awareness so they take aware possession of what they have un-consciously learnt.
This is in incompatibility to setting clear learning objectives at the outset of a chapter which is itself an exquisite custom and very lowly in schools. Incidental learning opportunities present far more of a challenge for the trainer and therefore ordinarily tend to be far less common.
I would argue that much of our learning is non-conscious. Schools, for example, make use of displays to review data to children. This kind of 'information immersion' is used to good supervene by advertisers. Just think how for real children 'learn' a tune or pop-song. Television can also be a source of incidental learning although, as with displays, of the more passive variety. Incidental learning is far more productive when children are actively engaged in the process.
Some time ago I complex my students in learning science straight through the medium of drama. It proved extremely productive and the children complex understood and retained quite difficult concepts because they had been actively complex in an enjoyable experience.
I must confess my inspiration for this project was drawn from an chapter of Sergeant Bilko entitled 'Platoon In The Movies' where Bilko commandeered a camera and created his own movie entitled 'The limited Spark Plug' featuring Doberman as the plug. Colonel Hall's wife was so enraptured that she was able to review verbatim how to convert a spark plug much to the colonel's astonishment.
Whilst 'playing' with the rods young children will have made many prominent discoveries:
Rods of the same color are also equal in length. Rods of the same distance are equal in color. Rods of distinct colors have distinct lengths. It is potential to make equal lengths by putting some rods end to end. Some children will begin to demonstrate an insight of the commutative asset of expanding at an early stage. E.g. Red plus yellow equals yellow plus red (r + y = y + r ) or numerically (although whole is not introduced at this stage) 2 + 5 = 5 + 2
In this way children will begin to accumulate their whole bonds without even realizing it. They will avoid the horrible necessity of counting on fingers because they will 'see' numbers as whole entities and not a compound of disparate units.
At a later stage, when they are asked what two numbers make ten or 'what must I add to 1, 2, 3... To make ten', children will be able to visualize the pattern. Fingers will definitely not be needed!
In our next record we begin to gawk the link in the middle of math and language improvement as we introduce the vocabulary children will need to express their creation in a written form.
Incidental studying - How Children Learn Math 3
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