Integrated Learning @Home Batch #1

  "Obviously I believe that the school system is still stuck with many beliefs. Here are Roger Schank's ten favorites, with our comments.  Mistake #1: Schools act as if learning can be disassociated from doing. There really is no learning without doing. There is the appearance of learning without doing when we ask children to memorize stuff. But adults know that they learn best on the job, from experience, by trying things out. Children learn best that way, too. If there is nothing to actually do in a subject area we want to teach children it may be the case that there really isn't anything that children ought to learn in that subject area . Our Thought : One example is how most of us do not know the rules of grammar, yet get it mostly right . Mistake #2:Schools believe they have the job of assessment as part of their natural role. Assessment is not the job of the schools. Products ought to be assessed by the buyer of those products, not...

  The myth of learning is simple to state and prove. The myth says that  only when we learn, do we learn . What it means is that unless there is a conscious and methodical method, learning cannot happen. It is only when we are taught (in a systematic, structured way) that we will learn. But this is not true. Let’s take the mother of all examples to prove it wrong: We all learned our mother tongue without any structured and specific effort to learn it. We learnt it by being exposed to it all the time, by hearing others speak in that language. Our brain was collating data, analyzing, concluding and assimilating it, without we or anybody perhaps realising it.  Similarly, if I work in a garden (or in an agriculture field) I will automatically learn about crops and irrigation.  In fact, the evolution of our education system is only recent - about 150-200 years old. We learned very differently for thousands of years. Perhaps we learned for different reasons. We did not lea...

  When you see an insect and say, "Yuck!" What does your child say? "Yuck" Lesson to a child: worms are yucky and possibly scary also. Without realizing we close a big learning opportunity for the child: To know more about worms, about nature and the food cycle, about aerodynamics or movement, about life. When you see a flower and say, 'Beautiful".  What does your child say? "Beautiful" (Even if the child is too small to speak, she appreciates beauty). Lesson to a child: Flowers are beautiful, something to appreciate. Maybe without realizing we have opened one learning opportunity for the child to know more about flowers, designs, nature and to appreciate good things in life.   Children see us, observe our behavior, listen to our words carefully and feel our feelings. How the adults approach a learning situation, the child learns to approach the same way. If we want our children to be curious, inquisitive, exploratory,  inquiring, we need to ...

  Kanupriya sharing - MINIMAL TEACHING, MINIMAL RESOURCES We are travelling and are at a place with minimal things. We (me and son) keep finding the ways to amuse us. Here are two fun exercises we did and enjoyed them thoroughly  Kinesthetic Intelligence  - We are in a very small house right now and there is hardly any place to do much of gross motor activities. We adapted Hare and turtle story. We started facing as "turtle and snail", " camel and giraffe", "bee and butterfly", " shark and whale", and many more. This not only delved with kinesthetic intelligemce but so much thinking the child did to find a relevant pair, to enact their walk, to control the speed according to the animal. Not to forget we had good laugh after every race. Visual Intelligence  - The place got just one magazine ( in the name of the book). I randomly asked my child to find a clock or watch in the book. He turned the pages in hurry and was irritated in the beginning tha...

HotShots - A small reminder to explore learning in many different forms at home each day. Sharing 82 gems for you to keep alive Integrated Learning throughout the year.   Also in this in this presentation - Click the link