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What does mastery mean to you?
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So what does mastery mean to you? For some time I had been thinking that mastery is quick recall of information or skill to, lets say, work an algebra problem, however I am rethinking this. As I see it now, I would say mastery is the ability to either recall information or be able to have minimal review to be brought back up to speed on a topic, skill or subject knowledge.
My friend and I were discussing this from the standpoint of beading (not a perfect comparison but…). So we learn a new skill in beading. We get really good at it; fixing mistakes, doing it mindlessly (mastery?). Then we don’t do that for months or years. We need to refresh ourselves, maybe watch a youtube video or two, but we can be get back up to speed (back up to mastery level?) much more quickly than when we first learned it.
Curious what you all think or what you have read from Charlotte Mason’s writings on this.
Julie
For me mastery of math means knowing how to do a problem. Knowing the steps needed to find the answer. My main focus in the elementary years is to know, really know how to add, subtract, multiply, divide, and understanding fractions and percentage. Not nessesarily memerize everything, but know what to do to easily find the answer; although I do want mine to memorize facts up to 12 as much as they can.
I was pondering recently about mastery in regards to history and science. Exspecially with Charlotte’s ideas of letting the child form their own relationship with the subject. How does this translate to mastery of a subject?
For us, in math and grammar, it is understanding and memorizing. For example, I do not concider addition mastered till the child can teach the concept back to me and give me the answer to a problem without any hesitation. This will bring about the kind of mastery you mention with the bead work. It will be easy to get back up to speed, if things become second nature now.
Now for content subjects things are different. I guess I don’t really look at these as mastery subjects, right now. If we do our timeline wall, weeks later, and my kids can give me the gist of what something was about, I consider it “mastered”. If they bring something up later on that we studied, I consider it “mastered”. If I see them playing something that we studied, I consider it “mastered”. But in reality true mastery is much, much more than that. If they understand the whys behind an event happening or how and why something works, plus have all the facts. That is true mastery. It is a mix of having complete facts and understanding, to have command of and to fully grasp a subject. I figure exposure will hopefully set off a light bulb, when they hear about the same things, later down the road. Then they will have more knowledge or understanding of a subject, but not real mastery. Now, if a child wants to go into a science or history field there will be things that need to be mastered as they get older. I don’t yet know if any of my children will be masters of these subjects. And even then it will not be of the whole subject. It will only be a subset or subsets of those subjects. Great question to ponder. Thanks for helping me think through that.
I am enjoying all your thoughts on this topic!! Thank you for sharing.
I agree with mastery of the basic math skills being basically no hesitation to respond. I also like the comment that in history it is being able to give the gist of what they learned. We have focused on getting to know various people in history to gather enough information that you could recognize their ideas, mannerisms or passions by what they’d be talking about, who they’d be talking to or whether they would be talking in a group or one on one. That sort of thing. However I would say that a quick re-study of the person would yield more recall.
I also like the comment about setting off a light bulb! That’s what I am beginning to believe it is. Maybe that light bulb is a renewed excitement about someting they have studied or a spurring on to recapture the fluency they once had with some subject matter.
In general I believe that there are very few things that we will have absolute mastery in the sense of quick, perfect recall. It has to be relevant on a day day basis to stay in that category probably.
Regarding mastery of math concepts, we have this dilemma: we use Math Mammoth & stay with one chapter until dd can answer questions and complete problems correctly. Then we move on to the next chapter. A couple weeks into the new material, we encounter some review of old concepts, whether in curriculum or in real life, and she has forgotten! No clue! (Honestly, I find it very frustrating.) So the subject matter was not truly mastered…
When it comes to math, I do not get too concerned with “rapid recall” for answers. DD will be pretty fast to respond but the a few days off a certain concept the recall will not be as fast but as soon as we start walking through it, it all comes back to her.
To me it us understanding and being able to teach the concept to me. From that point I know she remembers even if the next time it takes a bit longer. That is hiw my brain works, it is in there but sometimes takes a bit to recall 🙂
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