Active learning is essential to student success in any subject area. In a “Traditional” learning environment, teachers stand in front of a class lecturing, while students sit at their desk taking notes. Active learning engages students in the learning tasks and requires them to reflect on what they are learning. Active learning can be defined as any instructional method that allows students to take responsibility for their own learning and engages them through speaking, reading, listening, writing, and reflecting.
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| Sandercock, Irma. Active Learning Chart. How Does Active Learning Support Student Success?. March 11, 2013. www.teachonline.asu.edu/2013/03/how-does-active-learning-support-student-success |
Teachers should definitely incorporate active learning into lessons. If you look at the picture above, you will notice that students remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they hear, and 30% of what they see. However, they remember 90% of what they do. Learning activities that allow students to actually “do” is active learning. This increases student’s content knowledge and critical thinking skills. Active learning can also address students different learning styles. By incorporating a variety of teaching strategies in active learning, teachers can meet the needs of the visual learner, the aural learner, the kinesthetic learner (etc.).
Active learning is also very beneficial to special education students, which is my current field. I think about students who have functional goals which they need to meet in order live independent. Many of these students need to actually “do” the skill in order to learn it.
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| Phillip's Active Learning Padlet |
This week I had the opportunity to create a Padlet discussing a teacher that incorporated Thinglink into a social studies assignment. Thinglink is a great tool for students! It allows students to tag an image or video with web links, photos, videos, text, and other content. The students in the activity researched information on geography, economy, and the history of different regions in the United States. The students then created a Thinglink to display the facts that they learned about Illinois. I think that this was a great example of active learning. Students were engaged in the lesson by researching and learning various facts. The students then needed to write the important facts they learned. Finally, the students assessed their own work by following a rubric that was created by the teacher. Here is the link to my Padlet for more information about the activity. Below is a quick Thinglink I created and I included a few links as well.
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| Thinglink Example |
These are great resources! Thanks for sharing what you found on using Thinglink. Have you thought about using this with your students?
ReplyDeleteI've looked at Thinglink before, but had forgotten about it. Thanks for the reminder! It looks so easy to use, I might try it with my students this year.
ReplyDeletePhillip,
ReplyDeleteyou mentioned the heightened stakes for your special education students. As you say, their motivation in learning is not just to achieve a grade, but to develop the skills they need to live independently. This reminds me a little bit of the ELL students that I often work with. There's such a difference sense of urgency to their learning when compared with mainstream kids. They're taking the things we teach them, and immediately putting them to use in their everyday life, which is a really cool thing to be a part of.