What is Drill & Practice?
As an instructional strategy, drill & practice is familiar to all educators. It "promotes the acquisition of knowledge or skill through repetitive practice." It refers to small tasks such as the memorization of spelling or vocabulary words, or the practicing of arithmetic facts and may also be found in more sophisticated learning tasks or physical education games and sports. Drill-and-practice, like memorization, involves repetition of specific skills, such as addition and subtraction, or spelling. To be meaningful to learners, the skills built through drill-and-practice should become the building blocks for more meaningful learning.
I think the most important part (the last sentence) should read- to be meaningful to learners, the skills built through drills should become the building blocks by practicing and applying them for more meaningful learning.
6 comments:
I just read that same article!
In my opinion, drill is certainly mindless repetition and memorization often found in fact mastery. Many of us have experienced our fair share of drill in our own math learning. I think drill provides the tools necessary for practice. I believe practice is the application of skills and strategies in solving math problems thus building more meaningful learning.
You said it very well Kathy!
My thoughts are that drill can be used to build a skill to mastery and is essential in most all fields. Highly developed, successful musicians, athletes and even teachers, use drill of some skills to build automaticity and comfort that allows high level skills to be layered on top of one another.
Practice seems to be the execution of that drill, but also the generalization of skills into a variety of circumstances.
I often use some drill for homework assignments because it helps reinforce what we practiced in class and parents understand what their child is doing. I liked Margaret's comment about drilling and the dentist. It sounds like she is making learning skills fun in her room.
Anne A.
I tutored a 4th grade girl this summer who, according to classroom teacher, unit assessments and report card was having trouble with the facts in all operations. I planned for multiple activities to practice the facts--and to my surprise, with these activities she was rock solid with her facts. Further discussion revealed that she felt extremely anxious when put "on the spot" with fact drills and often put down any answer just to be done with it. Sure seems like a way to produce negative feelings about math.
I also agree with the last line and the key word- meaningful.
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