5th Grade Mathematics

Conceptual vs. Logical Learning

As I am sure you are aware, there are many different types of learning and, consequently, many types of students. A classroom often contains a diverse that encompasses many if not all of the types of learning in various students. Developing a lesson plan that reaches each type of learning equally can be a daunting task since we all have, at our core, our own style of learning and teaching. This is why it is sometimes so difficult to reach that one student in your classroom, or perhaps all of the students. If your learning style and resulting style of teaching differ from that of your classrooms majority, you may actually be struggling to reach any of your students. That said, I am creating these lesson plans as an example for struggling teachers. The goal here is to reach as many different students as possible in a single classroom so that they may each benefit from a strong understanding. You will not find a lesson plan for each topic or grade, but an outline for each major difference between students and how to tackle it. So, without further delay, allow me to demonstrate for you my methods of instruction. There are two groups of students that are often considered to share the least in common of all areas of learning. Conceptual and logical learners. A conceptual student would probably be best described by the one that loves word problems. He eats up every bit of practical application offered to him and excels with topics that can be demonstrated and understood vis--vis the physical world. These students are often seen to struggle the most in a mathematics course. The almost opposite of the conceptual learner is the logical learner. Students who are strongest in logic are capable of following the rules and laws of mathematics with relatively little effort. The difference however is much smaller than most believe. One sees a conceptual learner who is struggling with math and assumes that it is a subject they are incapable of comprehending, but this is not the case. You see, conceptual learners struggle in mathematics because it is essentially a logical course. It has real life interpretations, but those interpretations take a back burner during lessons to the rules that must be followed to obtain the correct answer. Here lies the problem. While logical learners can comfortably memorize rules without a context, the conceptual learner requires a connection between the rules and reality before they may become concrete. It is then the most difficult to teach mathematical principals to conceptual learners because of the common progression, chronologically, of lessons. If a concept is only explained in relation to life after it is described in terms of rules, it has no context for the conceptual learner and the rules and numbers are lost in a jumble. An effective means of addressing this difficulty is to provide a correlation between the principles introduced and real life from the start of the lesson. But how would that work for the logical learners? An excellent question. Below is the method I have devised for speaking to both of their understandings in a lesson. When you begin a lesson in mathematics, create two tables on your board. The table on the left will have the rules and relationships between the variables of the concept, and the table on the right will have a context in which the concept may be applied. Write the title of each at the top of its category and begin your lesson. All that must be done from here is correlating one to the other. The logical learners will naturally focus on what is contained in the left table and should be able to grasp the necessary information to process the lesson, while the conceptual students will continually look back to the right side of the board, creating a context for the proposed rules and remembering them in that way. This may vary in difficulty for different principles and concepts, but, with a little bit of creative thinking (or googling), it should not be difficult to create excellent examples for all of your lessons. I am confident that this method will make huge strides for many young minds who struggle in your classroom. Conversely, if you already teach largely conceptual mathematics and find that the logical learners are struggling in your classroom, try spending more time describing the relationship between variables than what they correlate to.