blog #4: gee chapter 5

While reading this chapter there is one point that stuck out quite clearly for me. When Gee stated, "Learners cannot do much with lots of overt information that a teacher has explicitly told them outside the context of immersion in actual practice. At the same time, learners cannot learn without some overt information" (119). I find this interesting because I have never thought about this middle area with students. I work at an after school program where I help students with their homework a lot of the time and I feel like I am cheating them out of their learning experience if I have to tell them how to do something (I like for them to work and discover it themselves). By reading this from Gee it seems that there are times when it is appropriate to tell students what they need to do. I suppose early grades do involve a lot of this teaching. In Kindergarden you are often told to repeat your abc's after your teacher. It is hard for students in younger age groups to grasp the abstract ideas of math and writing, so maybe it is essential that we give them some of this information to help aid them in their learning.