Actualization

Learning can only begin if the students is paying attention to what is going on at that moment in the lesson. If the student has not paid attention, she/he will not be involved in the following learning events. Some students can motivate themselves and focus their attention, but for others teacher's attention can significantly help to become more interested and motivated. In the process of drawing attention, it is important to evoke curiosity in students. Sometimes it is enough to ask a student to think about a matter or problem related to the lesson, and to predict or mention possible solutions.[Skola2030.lv]

First of all, knowing clearly the objectives of the lesson is valuable to the teacher himself/herself. It is the first step for a teacher to start planning the lesson at all. Another question is whether and why students should know the attainable objective of the lesson. Gagne supports this by explaining that the notion of what exactly needs to be learned in the lesson helps the student to start his internal cognitive control mechanisms. They help the student to understand what is the most important in the lesson, what needs to be given special attention, what must be clearly understood or what the student must be able to do over the course of the lesson. If a student does not know the learning objectives for that lesson, he/she works at his discretion and/or guesses on what is important and what needs to be learned. This, however, may not correspond with the learning objectives that the teacher wanted to reach. The teacher can simply report the learning objectives, ask the student to read it, or, in an organised process, give students the opportunity to discover the planned learning objective, thereby allowing students to have a deeper understanding of what is exactly expected and why it is important to learn it. [Skola2030.lv]

For every matter we learn at school, the students already have a notion. It can be correct, incomplete or delusional. It is important that students recall this past knowledge and match new knowledge and skills with previous ones, supplementing the gaps and changing the wrong places. Using previous knowledge in a new context or addressing new challenges is not an easy task at any age. In order to prepare students to introduce new knowledge into students' existing ideas or to change existing notions, the teacher must help the student to recall the knowledge or skills that can be useful at that lesson, and especially those that are indispensable as a basis for learning the new knowledge and skills. [Skola2030.lv]