On Students:

The pupil who is taught without doing any studying for himself will be like one who is fed without being given any exercise: he will lose both his appetite and strength.

Confidence in our own powers is an essential condition of their successful use.  This confidence can be gained only by self-prompted, voluntary, and independent use of these capacities.  We learn to walk not by seeing others walk but by walking.  The same is true of mental abilities.

The difference between the pupil who works for himself and the one who works only when he is driven is too obvious to need explanation.  The one is a free agent, the other is a machine.  The former is attracted by his work, and, prompted by his own interest, he works on until he meets some overwhelming difficulty or reaches the end of his task.  The latter moves only when he is urged.  He sees what is shown him, he hears what he is told, advances when his teacher leads, and stops just where and when the teacher stops.  The one moves by his own activities, and the other by borrowed impulse.  The former is a mountain stream fed by living springs, the latter a ditch filled from a pump worked by another’s hands.

Only when the mental powers work freely and in their own way can the product be sure or permanent.  Only when the student uses their own mind by themselves in their own way can the things they are studying be truly learned and remembered permanently.

These are all thoughts taken directly from:
John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954). {Here}

This is an outstanding book! I highly recommend it for anyone who does any type of teaching.

Those statements in italics are my explanatory notes for possibly unclear statements.

This is part of a series: {All Posts in Series}

Concerning Students:

Knowledge is characterized in different stages: 1) faint recognition; 2) the ability to recall for ourselves or to describe in a general way to others what we have learned; 3) the power readily to explain, prove, illustrate, and apply it; 4) such knowledge and appreciation of the truth in its deeper significance and wider relations, that by the force of its importance we act upon it—our conduct is modified by it.

Memorization of material is not true learning.  Only when one can reproduce the meaning with his own individual words is learning true.  Next is the one who can cite reasons for it.  Next is the one who can apply that knowledge to everyday life.

Bear in mind that complete mastery of a few things is better than in ineffective smattering of many.

These are all thoughts taken directly from:
John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954). {Here}

This is an outstanding book! I highly recommend it for anyone who does any type of teaching.

Those statements in italics are my explanatory notes for possibly unclear statements.

This is part of a series: {All Posts in Series}

On Review & Repetition:

Review is more than repetition.  A machine repeats.  Review involves new applications and associations.  It brings an increase of facility and power.

Repeat lesson materials with varying emphases.

Review over time, not just in one session.

Not merely to know, but to have knowledge for use—to possess it fully, like money for daily expenditures, or tools and materials for daily work—such is the aim of true study.  This readiness of knowledge cannot be gained by a single study.  Frequent and thorough reviews can alone give this firm hold and free handling of the truth.  There is a skill in scholarship as well as in handicraft, and this skill in both cases depends upon habits; and habit is the child of repetition.

The plastic power of truth in shaping conduct and molding character belongs only to the truths which have become familiar by repetitions.  Not the scamper of a passing child but the repeated tread of coming and going feet beats for us the paths of our daily life.  If we would have any great truth sustain and control us, we must return to it so often that it will at last rise up in mind as a dictate of conscience, and pour its steady light upon every act and purpose with which it is concerned.

These are all thoughts taken directly from:
John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954). {Here}

This is an outstanding book! I highly recommend it for anyone who does any type of teaching.

Those statements in italics are my explanatory notes for possibly unclear statements.

This is part of a series: {All Posts in Series}

1. Find out what your students already know about a subject; this is your starting point.
2. Begin with facts or ideas that lie near your pupils, and that can be reached by a single step from what is already familiar.
3. Relate every lesson as much as possible to former lessons, and with the pupils’ knowledge and experience.
4. Lead the pupils themselves to find illustrations from their own experiences.
5. Urge the pupils to make use of their own knowledge and attainments in every way that is practical, to find or explain other knowledge.  Teach them that knowledge is power by showing how knowledge really helps to solve problems.

These are all thoughts taken directly from:
John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954). {Here}

This is an outstanding book! I highly recommend it for anyone who does any type of teaching.

Those statements in italics are my explanatory notes for possibly unclear statements.

This is part of a series: {All Posts in Series}

Make haste slowly but progress surely. Go over materials and lessons slowly but surely.  Teach each lesson completely.  But make sure you are always making progress–you are always moving forward in the great scheme of things.  Don’t go too fast over materials, but don’t get bogged down.

It is the teacher’s mission to stand at the spiritual gateways of his pupils’ minds, serving as a herald of science, a guide through nature, to commend the minds to their work, to place before them the facts to be observed and studied, and to guide them into the right paths to be followed. It is his by sympathy, by example, and by every means of influence to excite the minds of the pupils, to stimulate their thoughts.

The most important stimuli used by nature to stir the minds of men have already been noted. They might be described as the silent but ceaseless questions which the world and the universe are always addressing to man. The eternal questions of childhood are really the echoes of these greater questions. The object or the event that excites no question will provoke no thought…. Questioning is the excitation of the self-activities to their work of discovering truth.

These are all thoughts taken directly from:
John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954). {Here}

This is an outstanding book! I highly recommend it for anyone who does any type of teaching.

Those statements in italics are my explanatory notes for possibly unclear statements.

This is part of a series: {All Posts in Series}

Use your [vocal] volume, move your hands, show visuals as a means to draw the student’s attention.

Don’t help your students too much. They need to learn some things by themselves.

Don’t be so concerned about getting through the material that your students don’t learn it.

When it is necessary to teach a new word, give the idea before the word. This can be done best by simple illustrations closely related to the student’s own experiences.

These are all thoughts taken directly from:
John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954). {Here}

This is an outstanding book! I highly recommend it for anyone who does any type of teaching.

Those statements in italics are my explanatory notes for possibly unclear statements.

This is part of a series: {All Posts in Series}

Distractions & Students’ Attention

Two chief hindrances to the attention of your students in class—apathy [to the subject] and distraction.

1. Never begin a class exercise until the attention of the class has been secured.  Study for a moment the faces of the pupils to see if all are mentally, as well as bodily, present.
2. Pause whenever the attention is interrupted or lost, and wait until it is completely regained.
3. Never wholly exhaust the attention of your pupils.  Stop as soon as signs of fatigue appear.
4. Adapt the length of the class exercise to the ages of the pupils: the younger the pupil, the briefer the lesson.
5. Arouse attention when necessary by variety in your presentation, but be careful to avoid distractions; keep the real lesson in view.
6. Appeal whenever possible to the interests of your pupils.
7. Look for sources of distraction, such as unusual noises, inside the classroom and out and reduce them to a minimum.
8. Prepare beforehand thought-provoking questions.
9. Make your presentation as attractive as possible, using illustrations and all legitimate devices.  Do not, however, let these devices become so prominent as themselves to become sources of distraction.
10. Comenius (Moravian clergymen in 16-17th centuries) said, “Most teachers sow plants instead of seeds; instead of proceeding from the simplest principles they introduce the pupil at once into a chaos of books and miscellaneous studies.”  The true teacher stirs the ground and sows the seed.  It is the work of the soil, through its own forces, to develop the growth and ripen the grain.

These are all thoughts taken directly from:
John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954). {Here}

This is an outstanding book! I highly recommend it for anyone who does any type of teaching.

Those statements in italics are my explanatory notes for possibly unclear statements.

This is part of a series: {All Posts in Series}

Warning: the very ignorance of his pupils may tempt the teacher to neglect careful preparation and study. He may think that in any event he will know more of the lesson than the pupils can, and imagine that he will find something to say about it, or that the ignorance will pass unnoticed. A sad mistake, and one that often costs dearly. The cheat is almost sure to be discovered, and from that time the teacher’s standing with the class is gone. Don’t fake knowledge of a subject. Don’t neglect study just because the students may seem very ignorant of this subject.

Warning: A more serious fault is that of those who, failing to find stimulation in the lesson, make it a mere framework upon which to hang some fancies of their own. Don’t use your lesson as a means of teaching your own doctrine or ideas on something unrelated to the subject at hand.

There is a meaner wrong done by the teacher who seeks to conceal his lazy ignorance with some pompous pretense of learning, hiding his lack of knowledge by an array of high-sounding phrases beyond the comprehension of his pupils, uttering solemn platitudes in a wise tone, or claiming extensive study and profound information which he has not the time to lay properly before them. Don’t hide your own ignorance or lack of study by speaking above your student’s heads and faking knowledge.

These are all thoughts taken directly from:
John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954). {Here}

This is an outstanding book! I highly recommend it for anyone who does any type of teaching.

Those statements in italics are my explanatory notes for possibly unclear statements.

This is part of a series: {All Posts in Series}

1. Prepare each lesson by fresh study. Last year’s knowledge has necessarily faded somewhat. Only fresh conceptions inspire us to our best efforts.
2. Find in the lesson its analogies to more familiar facts and principles. In these lie the illustrations by which it may be taught to others.
3. Find the natural order of the several steps of the lesson. In ever science there is a natural path from the simplest notions to the broadest views; so, too, in every lesson. Find the sequence in which to teach the lesson.
4. Find the relation of the lesson to the lives of the learners. Its practical value lies in these relations. Teach the subject in such a way as to be applicable to their lives right now.

These are all thoughts taken directly from:
John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1954). {Here}

This is an outstanding book! I highly recommend it for anyone who does any type of teaching.

Those statements in italics are my explanatory notes for possibly unclear statements.

This is part of a series: {All Posts in Series}

These thoughts come from The Seven Laws of Teaching By John Milton Gregory {here}.

The Laws of Teaching stated as rules:

1. Know thoroughly and familiarly the lesson you wish to teach; teach from a full mind and a clear understanding.
2. Gain and keep the attention and interest of the pupils upon the lesson.  Do not try to teach without attention.
3. Use words understood in the same way by the pupils and yourself; language clear and vivid to both.
4. Begin with what is already known to the pupil upon the subject and with what he has himself experienced; and proceed to the new material by single, easy, and natural steps, letting the known explain the unknown.
5. Stimulate the pupil’s own mind to action.  Keep his thoughts as much as possible ahead of your expression, placing him in the attitude of a discoverer, an anticipator.
6. Require the pupil to reproduce in thought the lesson he is learning; thinking it out in its various phases and applications till he can express it in his own language.
7. Review, review, review!  Reproducing the old, deepening its impression with new thought, linking it with added meanings, finding new applications, correcting any false views, and completing the true.

If you’re a teacher of any sort, pay attention to these.  These are outstanding!

More will be said on each of these rules in the coming days.