Guest Tredworth Posted October 4, 2006 Posted October 4, 2006 Can anybody help please? I'm running a FS curriculum evening for parents in a few weeks time. I have an excercise I've used several times before to illustrate the difference between active learning and paper based learning. Most parents coming this year have been to this session before and I'd like to find a new way of making my point. Does anyone have a short (10 minute max.) exercise which I could use with the parents? Thanks!!!
Guest Posted October 4, 2006 Posted October 4, 2006 Hi Tredworth, I'm intrigued, what do you do. It sounds like it would be a good exercise to explain how we do things in an active way. Sorry I haven't come up with an idea! AOB
Guest Posted October 5, 2006 Posted October 5, 2006 The one I know is giving parents pictures of exotic fruit and then the real thing to smell, feel and taste-is that the what you have used before?
Guest Posted October 5, 2006 Posted October 5, 2006 (edited) I think that was one of the first things we did on our High/Scope training, Deb. Our version was: the fruit name typed on a laminated card, a line drawing, a photo, a model of the fruit [plastic, wood etc] and then the real thing. [i don't think I've missed any out?!] Oh, and give them a knife for the real fruit, too!Then in groups of about 4 we had to write down descriptive words for each. If you do it on a landscape piece of paper, with columns pre-ruled, the results can be very telling! If you want a High/Scope slant, and Active Learning is one of the key principles of H/S, you could point out that there are 4 ingredients needed: Choice [i.e. you're not looking for a fixed outcome], Materials [usually identical sets for each child], Manipulation [you've got things to work with] and Language from the adult [which results in language from the children if the interactive style is skilful. We use this as a checklist whe we evaluate a lot of our activities. Edited October 5, 2006 by Guest
AnonyMouse_3735 Posted October 5, 2006 Posted October 5, 2006 have paticipated in similar idea using bubbles. we split into 2 groups and discussed afterwards. One grouphad to give words to describe, what they do, how they look etc and other had hands on experience , who enjoyed more, who learnt more from experiences etc. Inge
Guest DeborahF Posted October 5, 2006 Posted October 5, 2006 I've got a great one that I always to illustrate the point with new parents. I talk to them about that exercise that you always find in all the "early learning" books in Smiths etc. where you have to draw a line between matching pairs of socks with spots, stripes, etc. and then show them my washing basket full of socks and gloves of all colours, sizes and patterns and the basket of pegs and explain how the children like to sort out my washing for me and peg it on the line. It works a treat!
Guest Tredworth Posted October 29, 2006 Posted October 29, 2006 Thanks to everyone who replied to my post! Sorry it's taken me so long to reply, I seem to have had a catalogue of disasters with my recently installed wireless network which means I've not been able to pick up your responses. The activity I've used in the past is an adaptation of the HighScope fruit exercise described by Weightman. I usually ask parents to get into groups of 6, give them all a real orange, a plate, a knife and a clipboard. They have 2 minutes and and are asked to use all their senses to invesigate the orange and write a list of all the adjectives they can think of to describe it. They usually come up with about 40+ per group. Next, I give them a photograph of an orange and ask them to cross off their list any words they could not have come up with if they had only been given the photograph. This usually leaves them with about 10 words. Finally I give them the word "orange" written in black and ask them once again to cross off any words they could not have come up with if they had started with this word. They usually have 2 or 3 left. By this point, I find that there is very little left to do in terms of persuaduing them of the importance of experiential learning. Thanks for the suggestions on the bubbles (Inge) and the socks (DeborahF), I think I will video some children doing one of these exercises and use the footage to illustrate my points to the parents. Thanks again and sorry for taking so long to reply!
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