Chapt. 4

In Chapter 4, Daniel Willingham emphasizes that students struggle with abstraction because the mind naturally prefers concrete examples. I think it’s important that in order to help students better understand abstract ideas they need to experience those ideas in different forms.

Willingham argues that students grasp abstract concepts best when they see them applied in many different. Because prior knowledge is largely concrete, exposing students to different examples helps them recognize the structure of the idea. In our game we are applying this by teaching them emotions through many different senses. We will be teaching them the same emotions for each sense, but they have to recognize through one sense at a time what the correct emotion is. Eventually, they will be able to make connections through their senses and identify the different emotions being shown.

This idea goes hand in hand with the idea of helping students compare different examples. By deeply thinking about how problems are similar and different, the students are more likely find the deeper structure of the idea. This will help our students in our game because they won’t be able to use the same emotion twice. They have to pick a new emotion every time. So, when the students become able to recognize what the similarities and differences are between each emotion, they will be able to better understand which emotion to choose.