Tool Box of Learning activites
This is my favorite part of teaching, I feel that a huge portion of me being a teacher/Life Coach is constantly collecting new classroom activites to foster learning. Students love this, :-D especially if it's related to the material, their class and if they see it will help them excell in their future career.
One of my favorites in Psychology class is to provide a quick workshop on Personality Inventories, split the class into four main categories and provide discussion questions like: What style do I best get along with, most struggle with? What can I do to better relate to each? How will this help me as a _______ (future career).
-They LOVE this!
Does anyone else have any great tools they utilize to make class a better learning experience? 8-.
Hi Joe,
Super idea! I like to do learning styles for each of my students on Day 1 so that I can determine how they best learn, especially when I tutor them.
Patricia
One of the exercises I like to use for my programming classes is the dumb robot exercise. In programming, a computer is only capable of the things you tell it to do. Computers do not make assumptions for you unless you have provided them with the ability to do so.
This is illustrated by seating myself in a chair, and having students provide me instructions to sit in another chair across the room. While providing instructions, students are not allowed to look at me or the chairs (simulating a computer program running). Most students don't even realize that until I stand up I can't walk forward! This results in some pretty funny situations for the rest of the class and demonstrates why you can't make assumptions about problems.
I do the learning styles also. It is interesting to do with groups that have been together for awhile because they learn even more about each other. I also tell them my style and explain how I learn.
