Not t a piece of advice, but the whole advice! by amanda

Not t a piece of advice, but the whole advice! by amanda - January 2015 Scholarship Essay

Imagine. Stomachs turn, throats run dry, and the pounding of the hands on the desk sound repeatedly. The crowd roars, but the players are silent. It is a tie: 3500 to 3500. There is only ten seconds left to get the answer. The question was: What year did the United States enter World War 2? Both teams rapidly scoured their brains to retrieve the answer to the simple question. Immediately, someone yells at the top of their lungs at the last possible moment,”1942!” The beeper sharply whistles. The answer was incorrect! The team instantly loses 500 points in the simple game of jeopardy. The team hissed in a tender rage for missing the answer by one year. Despite their incorrect response, the correct answer is now instilled in their brain. So I advise the teacher to help me learn by setting up the class in a more engaged way, not precisely through only jeopardy, but through various exhilarating games that will allow me to dynamically acquire more knowledge and apply what I know and learned.

Making the class more fun by designing games to test one’s knowledge is the perfect way to help me learn because I will get to acquire more information about the topic that I may have inadvertently overlooked. Many times I am given chapters to read and what I see as important is not precisely the same as what my teacher says is important. If my teacher includes games into her lesson plan, it will help me better understand the material and know what is most important to look at. I am extremely competitive and ambitious, and I want to endure the feeling of triumph, assurance, and thrill when I win that round of World War 1, the treasure hunt to find the missing part of the prokaryotic cell, or pin the country on the map. The happiness I feel will not be because of that triumph, but because I was able to better understand and learn the material.

Testing and homework are exceptionally serious and allows me to only learn the topic just to pass the class. However, when I can come to class with the knowledge that I can have fun with my friends and learn simultaneously, I am encouraged to learn more willingly. There were numerous instances when I was tested on a subject and I chunked the information into my brain, spilled it all out in the test, and never retrieved it. However, when the teacher incorporates games and exercises to help me understand and remember, the information gets placed into my long-term memory. Therefore, the advice I will give my teacher is to incorporate games into the classroom setting that actively engages the students to help me more effectively learn.