Learner Circle would like to encourage children from across the world to join us in a fun journey of acquiring new skills online. With the help of experts and experienced tutors we have designed online courses for a wide variety of activities that focus on skill development, cognitive development and early age learning. Being consistent with our vision for an infinite journey of learning, we have added a few more courses to our digital platform. Our students can acquire a lot newer skills just by accessing our digital platform. In order to ensure this journey of learning is efficient, we have also added free practice sessions to all our courses in a bid to build a strong culture of practice.

What is learning
Humans have been known to possess the ability to acquire knowledge from time immemorial.
“Psychologists define learning as a relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of experience”.
Over the years, the methods of learning have evolved. Dr Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory proposes 9 types of learning for children.
In 1977, Albert Bandura, a renowned psychologist suggested that some individuals learn through observation, imitating others while they learn. Later this method was termed as Social Learning Theory.
While there are several pathways to learning, acquisition and retention of knowledge is only possible with practice. It is also the only way to achieve expertise.
Malcolm Gladwell in his book, ‘Outliers: The Story of Success’ consistently highlights the importance of practice throughout his publication. He repeatedly mentions the 10,000 hour rule, which states that in order to achieve world-class expertise a student/artist should engage in at least 10,000 hours of practice.

What is practice?
Learning and practice are strongly intertwined. In fact, in some areas learning has no value if practice is not followed. As is the experience of teachers, it has been observed that no matter what the subject taught is, there will be differences in student performances. These performances are directly affected by how much a student engages in deliberate practice.

Studies have unearthed crucial differences between deliberate practice and repetition or play.
This proves that deliberate practice is not the same as rote or repetition. As deliberate practice involves a lot of motivation, focus, determination and attention. This type of rehearsal usually leads to acquisition of new knowledge/ skills which can lead to expertise.
Practice is deemed necessary for expertise even if the student is sufficiently motivated and has high intelligence in the area. Deliberate practice only occurs when an individual repeats an activity to improve performance. (Campitelli and Gobet).
Benefits of Practice
It improves student’s ability to permanently remember new information.
It helps students manage more cognitively challenging tasks.
It enhances their ability in knowledge application in more complex tasks.
It often increases motivation due to the cognitive gains from practice

Practice should be
Goal-directed
Deliberate
An opportunity to focus on problem-solving
The Role of Teachers
It is important for teachers to design activities keeping in mind the need to solve small problems first with practice that will later scaffold the student to more complex tasks. Eg. Helping a student identify verbs or figures of speech may help improve fluency in language comprehension and reading.
Teachers may help by fixing a practice schedule for the child and doing a regular follow-up.
Practice requires a lot of effort, it can get monotonous and boring. Teachers can encourage students by bringing focus on improvement zones influenced by practice.
Activities or tasks given should be designed to help students succeed.
Teachers should show confidence in the student’s capabilities.
Providing timely and constructive feedback is very important
Tasks should be designed taking into consideration the knowledge level of the student.
Teachers should provide ample opportunities for students to practice.

Conclusion
At Learner Circle we understand the power of practice a student needs. Therefore, in a new initiative, we offered free online practice sessions for all our students. Any student who avails for our online courses will be eligible to take our free practice sessions.
Parents who are still in the hunt for online courses to keep their children engaged after school, may visit our website to get more details or to avail of a free demo.

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