Workshop
1 -- The Many Faces of Learning
Download Workshop 1 in
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In this introductory
workshop, you will meet the guest educators who will be featured in
the series and hear why they think it is important to continually
examine the learning process. You will also have an opportunity to
reflect on your own personal beliefs about learning, and see clips
of classrooms that will be presented in more detail in later workshops.
Self
Check
This icon indicates
a self check activity. These activities are designed to help you reflect
practically on the theories presented by the workshop guests. Specifically,
they will enable you to investigate your own beliefs and behaviors,
and sometimes those of your students. We hope that these activities
will help you to further examine your ideas about how people learn
and how these ideas might influence your teaching.
Workshop 1 Timeline
Getting Ready
- 30 Minutes
15 minutes
-- Learning a Task
In pairs, select
one of the following tasks that you both know how to do:
- balance
a checkbook
- cook a turkey
- fix a leaky
faucet
- use a graphing
calculator
- determine
report card grades
- potty train
a toddler
- prepare
an income tax return
- change a
flat tire
- install
computer software
Discuss with
your partner how you learned to do the task. Did you both learn it
the same way? How might others learn it? Could anyone learn it? How
would you teach someone else to do it?
15 minutes
-- Learning Chart
The activity
you just did should have generated some thoughts about learning. Discuss
as a group. On a large piece of newsprint or chart paper, start two
lists:
- Our Ideas
about Learning
- Our Questions
about Learning
These lists
represent what you know and what you want to know about learning right
now. As you progress through the workshop series, your ideas and questions
about learning will grow and change, and you should add to the lists
accordingly.
Select
a volunteer to bring the Learning Chart to each workshop.
Watch the Workshop
Video -- 60 Minutes
Going Further
-- 30 Minutes
15 minutes
-- Helping Karen "seeÓ
Think of an experience
or activity that you could provide for Karen that would convince her
that you need light to see. Share your ideas with your colleagues.
15 minutes
-- Moon Chart
Discuss what
you know and what you want to know about the behavior of the Moon.
On a large piece of newsprint or chart paper, start two lists:
- Our Ideas
about the Moon
- Our Questions
about the Moon
You should add
to these lists as you observe the Moon throughout the workshop series.
Select
a volunteer to bring the Moon Chart to each workshop.
For Next Time
Homework Assignment
Make a list of
all the different ways one could seat students in a classroom (e.g.
in rows, in a semicircle, in groups of four, etc.). Select three different
seating arrangements from your list and write about what that arrangement
suggests about the teacher's teaching style. The student's learning
style? The activity in which the students are engaged?
Reading Assignment
In preparation
for Workshop 2, please read the two articles by Eleanor Duckworth,
"The Having of Wonderful Ideas" and "The Virtues of
Not Knowing." (All readings are included in the Appendix.)
Moon Journal
We encourage
you to get started on your Moon observations right away so that you
can collect as much data as possible over the course of this workshop
series. Instructions for the Moon Journal activity can be found on
page 14.
Here's a possible
way to get started on your first Moon Journal entry:
Recall the Moon
Chart you made with your colleagues at the start of Workshop 1. Select
one of the questions that were posed during the discussion, and respond
to it. Do you have any initial ideas about the answer to your question?
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