Getting to "Got It!": Helping Struggling Students Learn How to Learn

The books came in a timely manner. Everything was great.

I bought this book for a graduate class that I am taking. From the introduction, I was blown away by what Garner offers to her reader. It is a complete paradigm shift for me as a teacher.The focus of the text is cognitive structures- how the best performing students have them, and the worst performing students do not, and what a teacher can do about it. The reason that this is a paradigm shift for me is because I have spent most of my career believing that kids misbehave in class and say that they do not understand something because they are trying to be difficult. What this book has explained and supported is that those students (many but not all) are probably lacking in the cognitive structures necessary to be successful students/learners.Garner begins with an explanation of what Cognitive Structures are and what makes them important for teaching and learning. "Cognitive structures are the basic mental processes people use to make sense of information" (2). The book goes on to examine the following cognitive structures in detail: recognition, memorization (which does have a place in teaching and learning, but perhaps not how we have been going about it), conservation of constancy, classification, spatial orientation, temporal orientation, metaphorical thinking, and the spiritual dimensions of learning.The biggest take-away from this text is that individuals have to develop their own cognitive structures, but that we as parents and teachers can help them to do this in some very simple ways. This text is only 168 pages (actual text is about 150 of those pages) and what is offered makes sense and is easy to do. Garner spends no time discussing scientific jargon or studies of brain activity, rather she spends those pages focused on the nuts and bolts of helping students to be better learners.

The learning specialist at the school I work at recommended this book, particularly for insight into the obstacles kids run into in learning math. It's actually a brilliant little book, very well worth the time (and cost). I've referred to it quite a lot in thinking through particular kids' struggles, and I've used its recommended exercises to wonderful effect. I wish this author would expand this book and give us more explicit instructions about her methods. However, there's a lot here to work with, and I think reading it would be useful to any teacher, particularly of elementary and middle-school aged children.

I ordered this book because my grandson was having trouble in school. I soon realized that he did not have a problem reading but a learning problem. Although I am not a teacher, this book did help me to understand that he learns differently than other children. I think this would make an excellent gift to teachers of students who learn in a different way. Betty's book would also be helpful for parents.

This is a good book to read. It allows one to look at other points of views.

The chapter about the spiritual aspect of learning speaks to the importance of teachers being in tune with their students, taking a more mental health approach. It takes educating the whole child to see results. I love this book and highly recommend it for all educators.

A brilliant and very readable volume about how exactly those basic cognitive structures Piaget talked about can impact learners, and how to help those who never developed them. Highly recommend!

Very good suggestions and easy to use!