Methods of fostering excellent students in the process of teaching History for grade 12 at Giao Thuy high school, Nam Dinh province

In each person's life, it is not due to lineage but created by each person's own hands. Come to the glorious victory platform with your own intellectual strength and believe that: where there is a will, there is a way.

2.2.4.2. Capacity building

“Competence is a combination of unique attributes of an individual, suitable for the requirements of a certain activity, ensuring that the activity is effective” [29.p. 78]. In learning, competence is often divided into two types: general competence and specific competence. “General competence is the competence necessary for many different activities, such as physical and intellectual attributes (observation, memory, thinking, imagination, language). Specific competence is the competence of a specialized nature, aiming to meet the requirements of a certain professional activity” [29.p. 78 - 79]. Approaching the trend of educational innovation, in the process of fostering gifted students, we focus on fostering general competences: self-study, problem discovery and solving, creativity, use of information and communication technology, use of language and specialized competences: reproducing events, phenomena, characters; Identify and resolve the relationship, influence, and impact between historical events and phenomena, compare, analyze, debate, and generalize; comment, evaluate, and draw historical lessons; apply and relate learned historical knowledge to solve practical problems; express one's own opinions on historical issues through the use of historical language.

In the process of nurturing gifted students, we consider developing students' capacity as one of the main goals because "capacity contributes to the acquisition of knowledge and the formation of technical skills corresponding to that capacity" [29. p.78], which means that the learning capacity of students being nurtured will contribute to realizing the goal of teaching activities in which "each person's capacity is formed on the basis of their aptitude. But the main thing is that capacity is formed in the active activities of people under the influence of training, teaching and education" [29. p.78].

In order for HSG to develop the above key competencies, we train the following basic skills:

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- Improve memory skills.

“Memory is a psychological process that reflects individual experiences in symbolic form, including remembering, preserving and reproducing in the mind what people have felt, perceived, vibrated, acted or thought before” [29.p.58]. Memory plays an important role for students because “for cognition, memory plays a particularly important role. It is a tool to preserve the results of sensory and perceptual processes. Memory is an important condition for the process of rational cognition to take place and for this process to achieve reasonable results” [29.p.59]. Memory is a component of human memory, “the process of memory bringing certain documents into consciousness, associating those documents with existing knowledge, as a basis for the process of preservation later, in other words, creating traces and old impressions of the object we are perceiving” [29.p.61]. Thus, memorization is one of the regular activities and a prerequisite for students to understand LS deeply.

Based on the above, in the process of training gifted students, we aim for students to have good memory ability: remember quickly, remember a lot, remember accurately, remember for a long time and remember systematically. However, to achieve this, in addition to some students with innate memory ability, most students who want to remember must go through the process of memorizing a lot, studying over and over again, but not just studying a lot, studying over and over again will help them remember for a long time and accurately. Even because of the reason of studying a lot, studying over and over again but still not remembering, many students are bored with studying LS. So how should gifted students be trained to have a good memory?

First of all, we identify two types of memory that are essential to cultivate for students: visual memory and especially logical word memory because "this is the type of memory that plays a leading role in humans, playing a key role in students' knowledge acquisition" [29.p.54]. In the process of cultivating this type of memory, we

Instructing students to memorize intentionally means determining the purpose of memorizing and using determination and high concentration to memorize and aiming for students to memorize logically. For students to develop this type of memory, we instruct them to practice the skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing, action (association, repetition, application in practice, asking questions...). To remember lessons well, students need to prepare their lessons carefully before coming to class. This is extremely important for good students because the lesson preparation process is a process of active self-study of students. For lesson preparation to be effective and practical, we assign tasks and give specific instructions to students such as what to read, what to do, where to read, how to do... and students must record any difficulties in the lesson preparation process, any problems that arise and have not been resolved to solve together when studying new lessons. Before each lesson, we check and evaluate the students' prepared products to promptly carry out the next appropriate learning activities. Thus, when doing the serious lesson preparation, students have actively and proactively self-studied the new lesson, so the issues that need to be learned in the new lesson will be shaped in their minds and they will remember part of the content of the new lesson. On the other hand, due to the lesson preparation in advance, when coming to class, students will be confident to learn the new lesson and actively participate in learning activities organized by the teacher. Thus, lesson preparation will help students absorb the new lesson better and remember faster and more. However, if students do not review the lesson immediately afterwards, the knowledge retained will gradually be forgotten and not retained much. Therefore, with our own learning and teaching experience, we train students to have the habit of "shuffling" lessons right after learning a new lesson, which means "preserving" their memory because the longer they leave it, the less and less accurate the information is retained. Effectively "preserving" memory is done by applying what has been learned to solve questions and exercises, giving examples, applying learned knowledge to solve real-life situations, debating with people, etc. The process of preserving memory will help students reproduce knowledge to serve the learning process.

However, a problem that we have to find a way to guide students to solve is how they can remember for a long time, remember accurately when the knowledge content is increasing, how they can remember the knowledge they have learned from the beginning of the year to the end... To do so, in parallel with fostering memory, we guide students to implement "anti-forgetting" measures such as attaching documents that need to be remembered to students' study materials, forming students' needs and interests in those documents, regularly asking them to apply old knowledge when learning new lessons, after finishing learning one or several new lessons, they will spend time reviewing and consolidating knowledge. The best way to review and consolidate knowledge is to give students exercises.

Applying the above method to train students' memory when studying the section "International relations during the Cold War", we proceed: assign students to read the textbook and other sources of documents in advance to learn about the causes and developments of the Cold War, from which we initially draw out the characteristics and impacts of the Cold War on international relations. Next, during the lesson in class using teaching methods, we and students conclude the knowledge issues that students have learned. For example, to remember for a long time and draw their own conclusions about the causes of this war, we ask students to recall the foreign policies of the Soviet Union and the United States after World War II, the development of the world revolution, etc. In order for students to retain in their memory the characteristics and nature of the Cold War for a long time, we guide them to compare it with the World Wars to find out the characteristics of this war. Along with the above measures, we ask students to contact Vietnamese law, the situation on the Korean peninsula... to deeply understand the impact and consequences of the war. After studying the lesson, we ask students to ask and answer questions for the lesson, for example: why did the Cold War appear? What were the outstanding characteristics of the war? How did the Cold War affect the world situation and Vietnam?...

- Develop analytical and synthesis skills.

“Analysis is the mental division of an object of perception into different parts, components, attributes, and relationships in order to perceive it more deeply.

Synthesis is the mental unification of parts, components, attributes, relationships, etc. of the object of cognition into a whole"[49,29]. Thus, in the process of learning history, to deeply and accurately understand historical knowledge, students must always perform the operations of analysis and synthesis. However, analysis and synthesis must be unified with each other, that is, "analysis is conducted in the direction of synthesis. Synthesis is performed on the results of analysis"[29.p.49]. These are extremely important operations to develop specialized abilities for students when learning history because when students have the ability to analyze and synthesize well, they will have the ability to argue well, that is, students achieve the unity between "history" and "argument" when learning history.

In order for students to have good analytical and synthetic skills in the process of teaching LS, we help students identify the requirements of analytical and synthetic thinking, which are:

+ Determine the purpose of analysis and evaluation.

+ Data needed for analysis and evaluation.

+ Analysis and evaluation direction.

+ The unified relationship between analysis and evaluation: to have an accurate evaluation requires accurate analysis, that is, students only conclude when they have complete, accurate evidence and reasonable arguments.

+ Analyze and evaluate from different perspectives: positive, negative, this side or that side and must be fair, objective and impartial.

+ To be able to evaluate students well, it is necessary to give specific and clear evaluation criteria, that is, to clarify the values of the standards: what is right, good, appropriate or wrong, limited...

+ When analyzing and evaluating, the subject must be placed in a specific historical context, and can be combined with comparison to highlight the issue that needs to be evaluated.

In short, to foster students' good analytical and evaluative thinking, we help them form a path to perform that operation: all inferences must be based on specific, accurate, and complete historical events, phenomena, and evidence. Historical evaluation is only valuable when it comes from historical practice and is tested by practice.

Applying the above method when assigning homework to students: evaluating the role of leader Nguyen Ai Quoc in resolving the crisis of the Vietnamese revolution's path in the first thirty years of the 20th century, we orient students to:

+ Recreate the social context and the Vietnamese patriotic movement in the early 20th century, based on the manifestations and results of the movement, find out the limitations, the main limitation being the crisis in the path to save the country.

+ That limitation is the main reason leading to the failure of the patriotic movement in Vietnam. Thus, the most urgent requirement of the Vietnamese revolution at this time is to find the right path to save the country.

+ Based on Nguyen Ai Quoc's journey to find a way to save the country from 1911 to 1920, with the result that he affirmed that the path to independence and freedom for the Vietnamese people was the path of proletarian revolution, which was the only path correct for the Vietnamese revolution, it can be assessed that Nguyen Ai Quoc paved the way for solving the crisis of the Vietnamese revolution's path.

+ Based on Nguyen Ai Quoc's activities from 1921 to 1929, it can be concluded that Uncle Ho contributed to gradually resolving the crisis of the Vietnamese revolution's path.

+ Based on the Party's first political platform approved at the Party's founding conference, it is concluded that Uncle Ho was the one who played a role in helping the Vietnamese revolution completely resolve the crisis of the path to national salvation.

- Foster critical thinking skills:

“Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with the aim of improving it” [17.p.9]. Critical thinking is “self-directed, self-aware, self-monitoring and self-correcting thinking” [17.p.10]. In learning, especially in history, critical thinking is extremely necessary because if students are nurtured with good critical thinking skills, they will avoid “biased, distorted, fragmented… or extremely prejudiced” perspectives [17.p.9], and at the same time, proficient use of critical thinking skills will help students “come to reasonable conclusions and solutions, testing them with appropriate criteria and standards” [17.p.9]. However, this is a high-level thinking operation that requires students with good qualities and learning abilities according to the criteria of “excellent students” to be able to perform it proficiently. Not only is it difficult, critical thinking is also a fairly new operation and is rarely noticed by students when conducting learning activities. Therefore, to train critical thinking in learning history for gifted students, we instruct them to:

+ Identify the purpose of the argument given.

+ What is the way to make an argument?

+ What are the perspectives when making an argument and what perspective are you standing from? From that perspective, what are the advantages and disadvantages of the argument?

+ Are the arguments presented contradictory, logical and consistent?

By fostering critical thinking in students, we aim to help them achieve the following standards of thinking: clarity, correctness, logic, depth, breadth and objectivity.

For example: foster critical thinking for students through exercises: There is an opinion that "the victory of the August Revolution in 1945 in Vietnam was due to luck because it took place in the context of Japanese fascism unconditionally surrendering to the Allies". Please respond to the above point of view.

With the above exercise, students first need to determine the purpose of that opinion, which is to deny the role of the Indochinese Communist Party and our people in the August Revolution, and the basis of that opinion is that "Japanese fascists surrendered unconditionally to the Allies."

So what is the other perspective?

From the scientific worldview of Marxism-Leninism, it can be concluded that the Vietnamese people are the fundamental driving force of the revolution under the correct guidance of the Indochinese Communist Party. Therefore, the victory of the August Revolution in 1945 must be the achievement of the heroic Vietnamese people under the leadership of the Party. This is the main decisive factor for victory.

The basis for this assertion is: our people have a tradition of patriotism, steadfastly fighting against foreign invaders, actively participating in revolutionary forces, directly participating in the General Uprising to seize power in August 1945. The Indochinese Communist Party is the only leading force for the Vietnamese revolution: The Party sets out the correct path, builds and prepares all aspects for the revolution through the revolutionary movements of 1930-1931, 1936-1939, 1939-1945, unifies the will and actions of the masses, organizes and mobilizes the masses to seize the opportunity of Japanese fascism surrendering to the Allies to revolt and seize power.

On the other hand, when Japan surrendered to the Allies, only three countries gained independence: Indonesia, Vietnam, and Laos, while other countries in Southeast Asia were also colonies of Japanese fascism but did not gain independence.

Thus, the victory of the August Revolution in 1945 in Vietnam was not at all "due to luck", nor was it because the Japanese fascists "surrendered to the Allies", but the decisive cause of the revolution's victory was the Vietnamese people under the correct leadership of the Party.

Methods of fostering excellent students in the process of teaching History for grade 12 at Giao Thuy high school, Nam Dinh province - 9

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