TED talks: How we learn?

BRING ON THE LEARNING EVOLUTION!




I was just going through some of the Ted talks on the theme How we learn when i found some very intresting responces that got me thinking about my project and my workshops,

"Sir Ken Robinson hits the nail on the head when he says we must educate individuals, rather than trying to make one size fit all students. The right-brain, artistic children are seen as a nuisance in some schools because they are bored to death by the left-brain curriculum and "death by lecture" approach to presenting it. Dr. Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, was a kinesthetic learner who would roll around on the floor trying to imagine particle behavior. He would be viewed by many teachers as disruptive in the classroom.

Overall, the message we hear as children is "you're not good enough," and this is reinforced throughout our lives in the workplace and by the commercial advertising on television. Performance appraisals in business and industry most often go something like this: "Jim, you are doing fine at xyz, but you really need to work on ABC." In my case, xyz might be project management, while ABC could be juggling. I'll never be good at it, so why worry?"

This got me thinking about my school days. I was that one child in class who hated to sit in a lecture and just stare at the bored and hear the teacher go non stop for 45 mins about a subject when I'd rather be rolling in the mud and learning my own way. In school even in my senior year i used to either draw out the lesson so i could visually remember what i was learning rather than textually or stand in front of the mirror and read to myself aloud and take on different charecters and instances so I could retain better. I realised that the poems I made tunes for or the first act of Julius Ceaser I made a drawing with characters for I still remember by heart because they were catchy and interesting ways of learning. So while doing that Is the child being disruptive or innovative? What is being creative and innovative and how can you judge that with a teaching system like ours?

Research Questions

-Can Drama or theater be used as a pedagogical tool?
- What all can theater do in the field of education?
-Is there a need for such sort of transformation in our teaching system today or is the current teaching system convincing enough?
-What do you think of Integrated Learning? and how should it be incorporated?
- What do you think of the new NCERT text books?
- How do you think that children learn best?

These are my base questions secondary questions will come up as the conversation builds.

Session 1, Class ||| C

I went for my first session with Blue Bells School, I was allotted a class of 20 kids. Much to my surprise the theater teacher of Bluebels school, Beatrice was one of the people from Adil Hussain's troop that had taught us in foundation.
For the session we had choosen the theme of SPONTANEOUS REACTIONS.
Let the children with he medium of body and movement express the elements of Water, Air and Earth.
We started of by introducing what i was doing and my themes of Water, Air and Earth. The were extremely excited as they were studying these in their EVS class. We began by first making a circle and closing our eyes to build concentration and feeling the warmth of each others palms. The concentration span of the children was zero. They were giggling and laughing. :) They were excited. We worked this excitement and energy to our advantage. We asked them to close their eyes and imagine a nice river a clam river...Blue, calming blue and you could suddenly see smiling faces. Choosing the right moment we asked them to start moving, all of them started moving in very very flowing movements with their hands and feet swirling from one place to another. We asked them to take diffrent moods of the river calm, rough, still and all of them understood the command and moved accordingly. It was fun to see their perception of the subject , but it was very difficult to keep their eyes closed. They didnt enjoy the slow part of the workshop and soon saw they were getting bored and suddenly we asked them to mover like rain with sound which they enjoyed very much. The made wishi-woshi sounds and tip-tip and pitter patter sounds. They knew the difference between the nature of the two water bodies. We did the same thing with the other elements of Air and Earth. They each Knew the difference of nature and material.
After the session we asked them to voice out what they felt:
" Air is all around us so, we cant move all around so it was a little difficult"
"Air was difficult because we cannot see air but we can only feel air, we cant even smell air."
" Rain was fun because I love the rain"
" Earth was fun because I like clay and made a figure."
" Water, I love moving like water."
Air was tougher for most of them as it was not a tangible object they didnt know how it looked or felt or touched and imagining that was difficult for them. I was very happy to see that they were not rigid to move or inhibited to express. They were very open.
A lot of their reaction came from their own basis of what they liked and what they didn't. After the class I gave them a sheet of paper each and asked them to draw what the saw while imagining and what they felt.
So eagerly waiting for the drawings! :)
My next session is on Tuesday with class |V D.

P.S : I didn't document this session as the kids are too small and they need to get accustomed to me and bring a camera would startle them. But I will document the Tuesday session as they are older kids.