Learning is a doing word and a worksheet just
doesn't cut it. Welcome to Neuroeducation, where
we're exploring the neuroscience of how to switch on the brain to
supercharge learning. I'll be sharing with you innovative teaching techniques,
effective parenting strategies, and educational advocacy. I'm
your host, Angie Dee. Together, let's revolutionize children's
learning. Hey
everybody, welcome back to Neuroeducation with Angie Dee.
Thanks for tuning in. Today we're going to start with a new concept, learning.
Learning is a doing word. So
often in education I've seen classroom
after classroom of teachers giving a certain amount
of content usually by way of a worksheet
and then the children answering sheets
on this worksheet and then the teachers considering that
the content is done. Now I don't blame some of
these teachers because they're under time constraints and
they've been given their own directives
from curriculum of how much they have to get through. And they've got
two weeks to get through this and two weeks to get through that. And they've only got three lessons
to get through something. And sometimes they feel like a worksheet is
the easiest way. However, I would argue that
learning is a doing word and a worksheet just
doesn't cut it because From ages
of old we've had the perspective that children
can be taught just in their head alone. And
unfortunately we got this from a theorist who
thought that our mind worked like
little gears and then they just went round and around and they would absorb
information effortlessly. However, in neuroscience,
we know this is not true. We know that children have
to be engaged to fully learn and
they need to be doing really to be learning. As
I've mentioned in a previous episode, we've got the learning pyramid that
shows us children might retain maybe 5% of what
they see, 10% of what they see in here, and
then it goes up to 50% if they're in a discussion with their
peers. 75% if they're
doing something. So what
we have, and 90% if they're peer teaching, but
what we have is from 5% and 10% to
75%, we can easily say it is improving
your learning by double every time
you add a hands-on component. What are some
easy ways that we can do this in the classroom? or
even at home. Whatever you're teaching, whatever it
is, ideally you're learning about life
and life is usually out
the door and in the real world. So what
can we do to bring learning to life? I
would say one of the best things to do is getting our children out.
And if you're a teacher, we know that there is bucket
loads of red tape to take kids on excursions, but there's
always teachers that have done. similar excursions that
you can use from, and I know that's one of the number one complaints of
teachers, so much red tape. I would say go
to somebody who's done it, use their exact same
documents and then reiterate it to make it
easier for you. Or ask one of your principals, vice principals,
ask other people to help you out because the learning happens
outside. So much learning happens in the real world. And what
we can do is try to bring that real world learning into
the classroom, into the home, or we can take children
out into the real world. Somebody
recently said to me, she studied her
first seven years of education. So it would be
equivalent of primary school here in Queensland, Australia. in
another country, over in England. And she said, we
got to go on so many excursions. She said, she
was almost 40. And she said, I can remember so vividly
when we went to a medieval castle, we learned how they used to iron
with an old school iron and we baked the bread and we got
to dress up in these costumes. She said, I can remember that so
vividly. As a 40 year old, I can remember that
real life experience. She's
like, when I came to Australia, I moved here and I
went and did my entire high school period from
grade eight to grade 12. The
problem was that during her entire high
school, she said she went on one excursion and
it was for her German class. And for that excursion, they
had to go and ask the German exchange students to
be able to buy a ticket at the train station. They caught a
train to Bingley, which would be the equivalent of about an
hour. and then they came home. They didn't get off
the train station at Beenleigh and go anywhere. They just
caught a train. In, that would be seven years of
high school. For me, I feel like that's a travesty. In
Montessori education, they call them outings and
outings are super important aspect of
learning because what are we doing? We're teaching children about life and
we want to get them outside, outdoors and into
life. So I would say one
of our best methods of resourceful teaching to
bring learning to life is to get children
into the outdoors, into life through excursions, through
camps if you can. My incredible mentor at
Montessori actually took
a group of kindergartners, no joke, from
America across the border to Mexico.
And what they did was fundraise for
their entire trip. And these are kindergartners. So
we're talking children from four to five, that
had to plan their trip, they had to plan their travel, they
had to plan how much it was going to cost, and they fundraised all
of the money they needed to do an international trip.
I think if kindergartners can figure
out how to get to Mexico and fund their trip and
go all the way across country, then
we can up our game as educators to
get children more into the outdoors. Because when it comes
down to it, these are the things children are going to remember. These are
the things going to really impact them for the future. And
when we're not doing excursions and we're not getting our children outdoors, what
we can do is bring as much as
we can into the children's world that is
real life and hands-on. If the children are doing
something on pen and paper, day after day, week
after week, we have to be asking themselves, what aspect
of this learning can we bring to life? What aspect of this
learning can we make hands-on? And this is where it's
fantastic to ask parents, ask the
community members. Often they want to be engaged and they want
to be able to do something, but they're not sure maybe how they can help. In
CMK Kindergartens in Australia, they
are one of the most renowned kindergartens and
usually have incredibly long wait lists. But I feel like not
only are they fantastic educators because they bring learning to life, but also
parents play an incredible role on bringing
the learning into the kindergarten.
So parents are helping building things
and bringing different things in to make learning come to
life. So, My advice for
the best kind of learning is to
make whatever learning we're doing come to life in
whatever way you can. If you're learning about a
different country, can the children be making food from
that country? Can you invite families from that country? Can they share things from
that country? Can you get a grandma to come and share stories about that country?
Or can they be building something? If they're learning about the environment, can they try
to build that environment? Can they go on an excursion to explore that aspect
of the environment? What can we do to make learning come
to life? Because after all, learning is a doing word. Thank
you for listening to Neuroeducation with
Angie Dee. You can do us a massive favor. It really
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