The Days of Reflection
Application of Kolb’s Cycle to Make Progress
Progress. You can’t get through a lesson without thinking about progress. It is important to make sure your class progress but as this happens over time and it can be difficult to demonstrate in a single lesson.
An earlier blog post mentioned Kolb’s learning cycle. A cycle of learning and reflection whereby the learner alternates between experiences and thinking opportunities to improve understanding. As a teacher, it is my role to facilitate this learning and ensure my students remain in the cycle.
The reason I try to apply Kolb’s cycle to my medium and long term planning is to ensure I think about the concrete experiences I hope my students have. Most people enter the learning cycle following an experience so I try to think of experiences that will drive intrigue.
Keep it simple
I am fortunate to be a teacher of Science as the subject has so many opportunities for fantastic experiences. A word of caution though. Science is viewed by many as being “difficult” or “A hard subject”. This notion can be difficult to shatter as for those individuals their experience in Science may have left them feeling unable to progress and then what did they learn?… “I can’t do Science”. Keeping this under consideration, it is important to read your students to ensure this fixed mindset is not developed from the experiences you create. If unsure, keep it simple.
What would you think?
So you’ve thought of a learning experience. Great! Now ask yourself… What would I think if I was experiencing this for the first time? It might be “wow” or “that looks so cool” : but if the experience is supposed to be progressing learning, then wouldn’t questions such as “how did that happen?” Or “can I make that again at home?” be questions which would inspire more learning and progress over time? When planning your lesson experiences think carefully about the questions that will follow as this will be key to maintaining momentum.
So this week…
I modified a lesson which was in a scheme of work. In the scheme of work students were learning about static electricity. They were supposed to move around a circus of activities using a balloon at each station to make observations.
I made a risky change… I gave each group their own balloon as I was concerned that there might be congestion at each work station. Some groups had a long balloon and some groups had a round balloon. None of the group’s cared at first… They had a balloon! Between stations they were rubbing the balloon on their hair “who’ s hair made the best static?”; they rubbed the balloon on each others clothes “which creates the best static… jumper or shirt?” They were asking questions, testing and concluding before trying again… off task but on topic. They were progressing through Kolb’s cycle in between the activities planned… all because I gave them a balloon… I gave them something to experience.
By the end of the lesson the students had completed all circus activities and written conclusions for how static electricity had been observed that lesson using scientific keywords. The students had met the objectives and more. I was thrilled and so were my students. It was sound learning disguised as childsplay.
What do you think? Would you try this with your class? Let me know.