Learning into practice ... being inventive with activities!

As summer school progresses, today we put the theories of the last few days into practice with some activities to assist in cementing our learning!

While many of the activities are not "as" suitable for five year olds, I found the overall variety of the activities both interactive and engaging - they all made me think and relate back to the readings but because they were all different it added to the resource bank of possibilities while giving the group as a whole an opportunity to engage in dialogue!

In no particular order a few of the activities we completed today ...

• Create a rap to summarise key points of a selected theory of learning - now, I'm not at all a fan of rap music but still found this task entertaining.  It also made me think about how I could rephrase the intended message to fit the verse of our song.  Importantly, in my own classroom it wouldn't have to be a rap song, it could be a poem, a ballad, or set to the tune of a nursery rhyme (I particularly like this one and will try it with my five year olds!)
• Create a newspaper headline to summarise your learning - particularly liked this one because you had to explain your meaning in just a few lines!
• Positive and Negative view point - this was a collaborative Google Doc with a table to type ideas against a number of view points.  What I particularly liked about this was it scaffolded us to think about the positive and negative side of each scenario.  So often its easy to just consider one side of a position.
• Visualising your position - this was a great activity, and I really enjoyed it which is interesting given I can't draw at all - but it was all about representing how you position yourself with regards to learning and learning theory.  My image (below) comes from my learning being pieces of a puzzle, hence the jigsaw pieces on my t-shirt.  The people on my shoulder represent the learning communities I involve myself in and being keen to share my knowledge and skills with others.  The yellow question marks (representing blonde hair) is for the reflective nature of my practice, always considering how things have gone and what I could do next time to improve.   I love my job and going to work each day, hence the smile, and the heart.