I am very excited to join Kindergarten Smorgasboard with this online book club!!!!!!! I am currently teaching in Kentucky in a small town after living in a bigger town in NOVA for many years SO I jumped at the chance to be part of this book club! Thanks so much for hosting this Greg!
This summer has been the summer of the sharks! Every time we turn on the news there is another sighting or even worse an attach! EEEEk uhmmm did I mention our beach trip is quickly approaching?
A few weeks ago, I took my 5 year old, soon to be Kindergartner, to see the Disney movie Inside Out. This movie could have been about learning instead of emotions and it would basically be a story of this chapter. The movie talked about the core memories and how important they are. In education we call that same thing back ground knowledge!
I can imagine what it would be like if our students had little people standing at their educational memory control panel. Instead of emotions like the movie, the characters could a scientist, historian, mathematician ...etc to help them recall the information! QUICK he wants to know who is on the PENNY.......... makes me giggle just thinking about it!
Frank Smith says, "We can only learn from activities that are interesting and comprehensible to use; in other words, activities that are satisfying.
Well, that seems easy...SO why don't we just to that?!?! Ok...now that I am thinking about it maybe it is not so easy. How do we get every student excited about every lesson to a level that they retain information and can apply it?
In this chapter, it has many example of students doing the work. They are grouping the materials into displays, they are doing the research and deciding what is important, they are comparing the material, and they are choosing what books they use for the research. Students need to be engaged at higher levels to make true connections!
I know as I look forward to this new year, I plan on giving my kids more opportunities to do the work...the hard stuff...the fun stuff....and I look forward to watching their files get full of new information that they have made new connections with!