The Learning Pyramid

One of the reasons why I love my job is in people that work for Unium. And it's not only about how friendly, positive, ready to help and open they are. It's also about how eager they always are to develop. How intelligent and broad-minded, well-educated and curious they are. Coming with all different backgrounds they will never stop surprising you.

And thanks to one of the colleagues I accidentally met in a coffee room last morning, I found out about the Learning Pyramid. She gave us couple hints about what it is so that we can dig that topic dipper on our own afterwards. Thanks go to her for that as well. So today while reading articles on David Kolb's Experiential Learning Model (in later posts about that), I also conducted a small research on the Learning Pyramid.

Basically, what it shows is the percentage of knowledge acquired through different activities. Those activities can be classified as Passive and Participatory Teaching Methods, the latter being the most effective, of course.

I knew there was a saying that goes something like "If you want to learn something, start teaching it", but I never knew it was actually supported by research. To add more, lectures turn out to be the most ineffective method. You just look at the percentage difference between lectures and group discussions!

For some people, of course, lectures can be a fine way to learn information as well - if you are an audial who has mastered the skill of successful note-taking and who has an inner-motivation goal and is extremely interested in the topic, the percentage will probably go up by 10-20 points. I'm pretty sure, however, that it will never reach the 50% benchmark.

Another picture that I found in the Net and want to share with you puts the Bloom's Taxonomy next to the Learning Pyramid. My next post will be devoted to the Bloom's Taxonomy in particular, so for now I'll just leave it here for you to analyse and sort of match. They don't correlate completely of course, and are focused on quite different topics. The idea of putting them together seemed to me to be appealing nevertheless.

P.S. What would be really interesting is to combine teaching methods and the Pyramid together (maybe plus the Taxonomy as well) and see which are supposed to lead to better results. Anybody interested in doing that? :)

Broaden Your Students' Boarders

At some point (usually in the middle of semester) I start giving out tasks to prepare a presentation at home and deliver it in front of the class at the lesson. It's individual work, no teams or pairs. The speaker chooses the means himself - PowerPoint, posters, blackboard, etc. or nothing at all.
And this semester I have got a group of really great 5-6 graders - they are super capable, willing and skillful. However, obviously, not skillful enough to deliver first-class presentations in English and speak freely for more than 15-20 seconds.

Yet I gave them the first presentation assignment last Saturday. In case you are not familiar with the foreign language level of kids at this age, I'm throwing in a picture. The huge dog illustrating all the skills you've got to have to deliver a presentation and the chihua-hua illustrating the set of skills they posses. Truly.
Now add the nervousness of public speaking (that would be those ears drooping over the little cuttie on the pic) and you'll probably come to the conclusion that it's not the best idea. I wasn't all that sure about it either. The bar should be high, yes. But not too high.

I asked one hero (really, I can call him that now) - Danya - to prepare a presentation on anything he wants: his lovely cat, favourite sport, hobby, favourite food, etc., and he chose to share one of his passions. Which is... Magic Tricks!
Can you believe that?
Trust me, I believed in him and thought he would handle speaking English in front of his classmates. I didn't expect a jaw-dropping performance, however.

Not only did he make a PowerPoint presentation, but also brought some "equipment" and showed us about 10 magic tricks right on the spot.. In English!
You could see his hands shaking, him trying to formulate ideas in English correctly and one would think Gosh, that's overwhelming. Nevertheless he dealt with anxiety just fine and made a great performance. I feel so proud of him! (although there is nothing I helped him with really) And also so glad that I decided to give that task after all.

And this post, I hope, will serve as a reminder to other teachers and myself too that kids are capable of lots of things indeed. We shouldn't limit their creativity and development zone by being afraid of failure or not believing in them. Well, definitely one cannot be successful all the time, and bumps will come along the road, here and there. But you'll never learn (and what is more important - broaden) your borders till you try.
And being a teacher I feel responsible for showing a child where his current benchmarks are and how to broaden them.

So dear colleagues, here is what I want to tell you:

Broaden your students' boarders ;)

Assigning creative tasks wisely

Being a real fan of communicative and project-based approaches I often find myself writing a lesson plan that leads to writing and presenting a poster/idea/concept, etc. Judging by my experience with such tasks and tasks on creative essays, students nowadays are struggling with coming up with ideas and something new. Well, to some extent it's just the matter of their age - boys of 11-15 years old tend to find everything connected with killing, blood and stuff funny. Ask them What would you do if a friend betrayed you? and you will get Kill him! as an answer. It's not that they are cruel or smth, no. It's just that they think it's chucklesome and usually laugh saying that. Other than this bloody topic, it's almost impossible to get some creativity from them. That's mostly about boys though. And it's not a universal rule, just a tendency.

So lately I've been thinking on how to spur their creativity, ability to think out of the box, come up with something new and break through their own borders.

And all that led me to some conclusions and suggestions about how to organise children's project work, which I'd love to share.

1) Keep language in focus. Ensure that eduactional goals are reached: if you want your students to use some particular vocabulary in their presentation speech there are two ways to do that:
- make it a requirement to use 5-10-15 phrases from some particular unit. When evaluating the presentation count how many they used and let it be one of the criteria of your final project assessment (with students being aware of it beforehand of course). However it may add some artificiality to their speech.
- set some very precise questions that should be covered in the presentation and which are unlikely to be answered without the vocab you want to train. These way the language will come to students' minds naturally, however there are no guarantees that they will use the lexis you have in mind. Although if your lesson is structured correctly and the project stage comes after a large number of activities with the vocab in focus, learners are more likely to reach the goal of using new words and expressions.

2) Too wide choice leads to no choice. Giving freedom in terms of subject of the task is good only for students who have sound experience in creative tasks. For students who are just starting to work with them wide field is confusing and, to add more, it even impedes the process of creation, as a learner has no idea what to write or even think about. Too wide choice leads to no choice.
That's why you need to set the topic and give the task as clearly as possible.

To illustrate this idea I can give you examples of projects:

1) what life in old times used to be like? - bad topic
2) what was it like to live in the 19th century? - better
3) what social life did people in the 19th century in France have? - good

The best thing is to provide your students with aspects that can/should/must be covered. As a task it should look like that:

What new home appliance will be invented by 2030?
-what will it do
-it's size
-it's price
-who will invent it
-how will it look
-will it have several modifications
-who will use it most
-...

Give a narrow topic. Set very precise task. Give simple and clear instructions.

3) Collective brainstorming. Before getting into small groups or starting to work on one's own have a 3-5 minutes brainstorming session where students can suggest their ideas in a whole class activity. It will kill two (even more though) birds with one stone:

- shy students will see that any idea can be supported and has a right to live;
- shy students will get more engaged as everybody will be speaking their mind;
- students who cannot come up with anything will be able to choose from the topics suggested and not just sit and blink when time for project development comes;
- students will be able to look at the problem from different perspectives and see that ideas and points of view differ;
- even one word can stimulate smb's thinking process. Combination of ideas that one had in his head and another said out loud can give birth to some new brilliant thoughts.

4) Start together. Give or elicit from students possible ways of starting the writing/presentation.
What can we begin with?
What questions can we answer first?
What phrases can we use to start the speech?

All this will give the atmosphere of mutual engagement + drive the process from a dead-lock.

Wish you inspiration, fun and best of luck at your lessons! :))