Imagine being in a lesson where the discussion around you is about whether the flargot of the zembon is likely to increase the crojang of memolian. It’s a fascinating discussion…… apparently. Several students and the teacher seem to be geeking out over it. David thinks the crojang will decrease because the flargot is rising and positive changes to zembon and memolian are mutually exclusive.
Here in the corner, the students cannot contribute because they don’t know or understand the terminology – even though there in their books they can see copied references to zembon and its flargot. The crojang of memolian is just assumed knowledge – it’s never even been taught explicitly but apparently we’re just supposed to know.
This imagined scenario is actually entirely real, played out every day in many lessons, albeit with real words and concepts. Just in the last few months I’ve seen numerous lessons that included assumptions of knowledge that seemed to leave multiple students feeling flummoxed.
The teacher was addressing the whole class, engaging them in questions or discussions that required them to understand some key concepts of terms just so that they could follow the explanations.
