Activity 3.1 – What does Active Teaching look like?
Age: 5 to 6 years – First Year Infants
An active approach to learning involves learning by doing.
Active teaching and learning means that the students are actively participating in the learning process. The students are actively engage with the material, participating in the class, and collaborating with other students and the teacher to make meaning of the material being taught.
It highlights the importance of social interaction, discovery, play and trial-and-error for learning and development.
Some Strategies are:
1) Learning through Play
It involves using hands-on, fun, and interactive experiences to stimulate cognitive development. When children learn through play, they can be engaged more willingly.
2) Role Play
Role play involves taking on different personas during a lesson in order to view things from various perspectives. It encourages critical and non-egotistical thinking, which may lead to increased empathy and seeing issues from a more holistic angle.
3) Group Projects
Group projects get students working together to solve problems. They force students to discuss issues, consider each other’s perspectives, and construct knowledge together to come to share agreements on how to go about projects.
4) Grab Bags
A grab bag is a great way to get students thinking and learning actively. Students are required to put their hands into an opaque bag (such as a canvas bag) and feel the item within the bag. They need to describe the item and guess what it is simply based on what they feel. It stimulated learning through tactile methods and encourages thinking skills to try to solve the mystery.
5) A Kinesthetic Approach
A kinesthetic learner will learn best through using their body in the learning process. This can include learning through gross motor movements (sports, for example), tactile experiences (e.g. touching something and feeling its features).
6) Guided Practice
This involves the teacher gradually releasing responsibility to students. It starts with the teacher modelling a task, then having the students do the task with the teacher, then finally has the students doing the task independently.
This an approach to education where a student who is more advanced on a topic mentors a less advanced student. This approach is beneficial for both the advanced and apprentice learner. The advanced learner needs to refine their knowledge and structure it in a presentable way, while the apprentice learner gets to learn from a ‘more knowledgeable other’ in the classroom.