Information Gathering

Making sense of our world is something we do daily. As adults, teachers specifically, we not only make sense of our world, we unwrap the world so our students can get a handle on it.

Information gathering is a key fundamental in the making sense process for children. I should add here that my comments in these blogs refer to children of primary school age. If you’re a high school teacher, scale it up for your students. 

The gathering process is a real-world skill. The previous blog used the analogy of a shopping trip to illustrate it. We are constantly gathering information.

A newborn child does it from their first moment in the world. We use our senses, and our brains process what we perceive.  

The gathering, organising, and communicating process extends what we do naturally. Why not plug it into our teaching strategies? 

But let’s step away from school for a moment. It has been estimated that children are exposed to about 1500 marketing messages daily.

That’s a lot of gathered information. Is 1500 a bit of a stretch? Not really. The breakfast table, for instance, is home to cereal boxes, milk cartons, bread packets and egg cartons. 

Of course, there are others. 

That’s before the tablet or breakfast TV kicks in with more. And we haven’t even left the house yet. 

Of course, most of these messages are ignored. We’ve often seen the cereal box; it’s part of the background. We’re straying into the organising phase by missing messages. But we can’t gather without consciously or unconsciously making a choice.