During last week's class, we discussed understanding by design as well as using different strategies as structures for learning, for example, the square game. The square game was a simple way of demonstrating many important techniques. Team work, roles, and understanding instructions we're all covered during the class, but I believe the hidden meaning behind the square game was the most interesting. We learned that through this simple exercise, one could build a framework in a students mind through which many different exercises can be implemented. Forming sentences by giving each student a part of speech and then having them form the sentences together was very interesting to me because it's an activity that would be useful in my field of study. It would allow each student to understand how to use a verb, a noun, adjectives and subject pronouns, etc.. All the while they would work on teamwork skills and playing certain roles in a group.
The other topic covered, although more in a secondary fashion, was the topic of "fun". I found it interesting that the word "fun" had an odd meaning in class, "I thought classes weren't supposed to be fun?!" I heard a couple times from Professor Horwitz, clearly poking at our opinions of fun and it's place in a class. Personally, I don't see why a teacher wouldn't want a class to be fun. Anything g that's fun is going to be have a good reception, as well as more interest, thus, more attention is paid and more learning happens. A fun project will inspire students to work harder, whereas a dull assignment will likely cause students to loathe the assignment and do anything to get it over with. Throughout this semester my essential question has been forming, and is currently, "how do I make a class where my students are MOTIVATED to learn". I believe motivation and fun can go hand in hand, especially since foreign language is not as required as math and science, where motivation can come from necessity and not from interest or fun. Foreign languages need to be fun, motivational and interesting because if they aren't, students will simply stop taking them after the required one or
two years. Thankfully, I believe a foreign language is the easiest course in which to have fun.
http://funforspanishteachers.blogspot.com/2012/08/17-fun-games-to-play-in-spanish-class_15.html?m=1
I one hundred and fifty percent believe that learning and fun go hand in hand. I have a theory that if I can't find the least bit of fun in something then it is not worth my time. I carry this with me through everything. Even little things like cooking dinner I will make a game out of it. In my current employment working with children I believe that if I'm not having fun, how can I expect any of the children to have fun. This is an energy and excitement I hope to bring to my classroom. A beautiful thing is that as a person you have the power to make your own fun, and I hope to inspire my students to do that when they see how much fun I have when unlocking hidden themes in a text. Why should students get all the fun?
ReplyDeleteI have to agree about your "hidden meaning" comment, as group actives have a lot of benefits aside from teaching strategies and content. If the role of school is to not simple teach students information but to make them all-around better individuals, then collaborative learning is essential. For instance, it's a great way to develop social skills and build self esteem, two things that are vital to success in the "real world." If For this reason, I think it's a must that more collaborative learning situations are available to students.
ReplyDeleteSo there's this game called "exquisite corpse" which sounds morbid but hear me out on it. It's this game where each student is given either the role of verbs, nouns, adjectives,ect. The object of the game is to set up a series of templates that a natural sentence structure might follow. So it might be something like the adjective noun verbed the adjective noun. The students are then tasked with filling in the blanks that correspond with their role. The end result is a strange sentence but it ends up teaching vocab, sentence structure, creativity, and is genuinely fun. When you were talking about using something like that for portugese I thought well that could work for English too. There is a way to play it where you make poetry and it could easily be used to set kids up to make their first attempt at a poem.
ReplyDeleteI was talking to Dr. McMunn yesterday (some of you may know her as the southern belle of the English department) and she mentioned that in the 17th century, "fun" was defined in the way that we would use "cheating". Sometimes, students need to be tricked into believing that something educational was purely for their own entertainment so that on later inspection they can see the web that their eyes weren't paying attention to before. Through the tool of fun, students can find comfort and ease in their learning and develop enough of a heightened state of awareness to apply knowledge to every situation they encounter.
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