In “Reaching the Second Tier†the author talks about sequential and global learning.
Sequential learning goes in little chunks that build on other chunks, sometimes in those spirals of public school- where you get more information on the same topics each year. It is definitely how the public school is scheduled.
Global learning, however, appears to show less well in our school systems. Global learners “need to understand how the material being presented relates to their prior knowledge and experience.â€
What would that mean in execution? Maybe I am just not understanding this. Or maybe it works especially well in science education (the focus of the paper) and less well in English.
I do talk to them about narratives being the most common papers in high school when they write a narrative paper, their second journal essay.
I also, very carefully, discuss which types of papers are most likely to be used in which class as I assign them. For instance, I discuss the descriptive paper for an art class. And, I tell them, research will be done for almost any discipline.
Is that helping the global learners? I don’t know. I kind of saw it as explaining why it was important that they get it, since it’s not just useful for my class, but also for other classes.