Active Learning: A Year Told In Six Words
Active Learning: Engage Your Students!
What we took a look at...
365 days. A year. A lot of months, weeks, and days. A lot of opportunities for a lot to happen. Could you sum up a year in just 6 words!? My lovely group members (Amelia and Pearl), and I examined an active learning activity in which students were asked to do just that. Students, grades 1-7, at Coonley School in Chicago were asked to use just 6 words to describe their school year. Their answers were then shared via PowerPoint with their peers. Below are some snapshots of our Padlet, but you can access it in its whole here.
Image source: Padlet.com
Image source: Padlet.com
In the top left image, you can see student examples of their six word summaries, a small description of the activity, and a blurb about active learning. On the image to the right, you can see options on how to modify this activity for various student functioning abilities. And there is even a link on our full Padlet for a special ed memory book that is no-writing!
What makes this active learning?
The six word summary activity is active learning because students are ENGAGED!! They are not simply being taught at- they are a part of the learning process. In this project, students are thinking about the highlights of their year, what meant the most of them, and how they can condense that into just a few words. They are taking the lead on their learning, and therefore it holds more meaning to them and is more exciting.
Should teachers use active learning?
Do you remember being in class when you were a student, or even being in grad school now, and the teacher is just lecturing on and on and on and on??...You find your mind wandering, doodling on the handouts you were given, or browsing the web on pointless websites. When teachers rely solely on whole group instruction, they will lose student attention within the first few minutes. Students want and need to feel like they are a part of their learning! And they should! They spend 7 hours a day learning a lot of things, they have to have some say in how they do that. Active learning gives students the opportunity to be a part of what they are being taught. It allows them to give input, express themselves, and quite honestly...gives them a break from just being talked at!
Real life example
I work in an instructional elementary classroom, and all of my students have social work minutes. That means we spend a lot of time on social emotional learning (social emotional skills need to be explicitly taught!!) So I think this is an area where active learning is both vital and extremely helpful. What is going to help the students more? Giving them the definition of empathy, or modeling it with them and having them act it out with their peers? If you chose the modeling and acting, you are right! :) One game we play in our room is 'emotion go fish'. Students have to act out the emotion of the card that they want to ask someone for, the other student has to guess the emotion, and tell if they have it or not. Students are so engaged, and actually learn so much about many different emotions and what they can look like!
Do you use active learning in your classroom? If you do, or if you don't, here is a basic list of simple strategies that you can use every day that will transform your teaching into active learning! Trust me, it is so simple...you can implement a strategy tomorrow!
Nellie, I really enjoyed reading your blogpost. I like how you started out your post because it really made me stop and think about the amount of time we have with our students and how much can change in a year. I also LOVED the activity that your group was assigned. I think it is such a reflective assignment that would be beneficial for all grades. I also really enjoyed your reflection on real life examples and have put a few of your activities on my "list". I think when people first think about instructional rooms they do not think active learning is possible, but I think that these classrooms are actually setting the stage for other classrooms to incorporate active learning. The article was also super informative! Thanks for a great post, Nellie! -Mary Kate
ReplyDeleteHey, Nellie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing. Your opening did a great job of setting the context for the activity. I can only think about how challenging it would be to summarize a year in six words, yet I can also how potentially powerful this could be. I like the fact that you broke the Padlet into smaller pages. Sadly, I would have never thought of that! Your reflection on the danger of over-lecturing is so true. I once set up a student shadowing day in my school where teachers followed a students entire schedule for a day.The results were rather sad. If most of us would have to sit through 7 hours of lecture and seat work, our heads would explode. Thanks, also, for the cool list. Great ideas...
Darren
Nellie,
ReplyDeleteI definitely could relate to your comment about sitting in a class and the teacher is just lecturing on and on. It makes learning so very hard for me. I lose my train of thought and find it so hard to concentrate. I am a huge advocate for getting my students up and letting them move around. Brain breaks are wonderful for them and they are able to go back to work more focused. I think a mixture of learning styles is the best approach for most students.
Nellie -
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing. I can relate so well to your comments about how active learning enhances social emotional learning (SEL) in the special education environment. This last semester I was providing pull out vocational lessons for multiple classes of students with disabilities across multiple ability levels and one thing remained constant: every lesson was really an SEL lesson, and every lesson was enhanced by student participation, role-play and modeling. I can't even imagine just talking at my students for an hour at a time! Reflecting on your points, I think it's helpful that active learning makes students feel involved, not only in the lesson at hand but also in a classroom community where their ideas are valued.