Session on Humour and Creating Learning Environment

 We did two activities during the humour session:

Our experiences and learnings from them were: When one is humorous

• You are being open , in the sense that you understand others viewpoint.
• It is the first step to bring our stress levels down.
• A lot of inputs come in naturally.
• You appreciate other people and you are non judgmental.
• It makes the environment lighter thereby releasing a lot of energy.
• It allows you to be yourself and not thus not being artificial.
• Humour works with children very well as it changes their current state of mind (if negative), and works with facilitators too.
• This makes all our senses come alive and learning becomes more effective.
• Also it is a good way to start the day.
• Humour is motivating, creativity blossoms, involvement evolves.
• It is good to be laughing, khud bhi hason aur dusron ko bhi hasao.
• It is a good tool to criticize in a soft way and can be used to discipline children without hurting or putting them down .

When one  creates a physical environment::

• Creativity comes alive with or without resources.
• Each session can be made interesting as it stimulates the mood thereby making learning easy.
• It also encourages spontaneity in class.
• It makes the whole atmosphere very thrilling.
• It is also very rewarding to the children.
• The paper cutting reward slips is a very beautiful idea to appreciate children in class.

All of us would love to incorporate humour not just in class, but as a way of life itself. 

 Anjana :-)
8TTT

[Topic on Habits of Mind: Respond appropriately to others feelings (Kirthana) ]

Started to think..... firstly, what are feelings? Started to daily jot down about my feelings through out the day. How am I expressing my feeling, or do I express them at all to anyone? How do I respond to my own feelings and others feelings was a huge brainstorm....Whooo!

Feelings are an important part of YOU. In order to live fully and effectively, you need many sources of information (e.g., your senses, your thoughts, your perceptions) to guide you, motivate you, and help you make sense of things.

For example:

1) To feel sadness in response to loss

2) To feel happiness in response to something desirable

Two students experience the same event on scoring 90% on a test, but interpreting that event in dramatically different ways.

 

One student's interpretation might be, "Wonderful! That was a tough test, I studied hard, and it paid off!"

Now, imagine the other student's interpretation to be, "Oh no! I didn't get the top score. I'm never going to get into grad school and that's terrible."

 

Probably, the first student's emotional response will be positive; the second student's negative. The event was the same for both; the differing interpretations led to the differing emotional responses.

 

Definition:  There is no specific definition. Words or even silence, at times, that express empathy and improve the state of mind with a sense of esteem, empowering them, and selfness not giving any negative feelers is responding appropriately. This ensures that the children are guided to healthy emotional growth with a good emotional vocabulary.

 

If you value their emotions, they will too.  

 

Example:

A Surf Excel advertisement...two kids walking back from school and the little girl falls in a puddle of muddy water and starts crying. The little boy then plays dramatically and falls on to the puddle and starts beating into the puddle and he gets all muddy. He gets up and tells the girl "It (as in the "puddle" is saying 'Sorry'). The girl gets her smile back on her face.

 

The boy's action and response made her feel better. What better way, we could have said or done anything. Action speaks louder than words.

 

Activity 1: Play different kinds of music that categorize sad, happy, celebration, patriotic, angry, silly, and encouraging emotions. Let the child explore each of the tunes and recognize the emotions behind each of the music would help the child to understand different emotions.

 

Activity 2: Making a painting that depicts an evening in the park with the following pictures:

- A bunch of kids playing making a circle (emotion: happy)

- Children playing the slide and waiting for their turn (emotion: patience)

- Child playing the swing, while another child crying for the swing (emotion: sad)

- A dog chasing a child (emotion: fear/ afraid)

- A child at the ice cream stand (Emotion: excitement)

 

Many more scenarios that show frustration, angry, crying, boredom and other emotions can be introduced.

 

Make small placards with all these emotions and get them to tag these placard to the painting.

[Story telling session - Kirthana]

Story Telling:

Fresh in my mind is the entire session from today. The story telling techiniques brought to our awareness by Uma Khanna was absolutely worthy and very helpful. I can now relate how important these tips & tricks are during story telling session.

 

First activity was using an adjective before every name. Eg: Sensitive Sudha, Marvelous Medha, Malai Marke Mallika and many more cute ones.It was exciting and equally provoking and woke you up to the session.

 

Then, a story was narrated and then we categorized each of the elements for the story. This gave us an understanding of the following categories in a story:

1) Characters

2) Time Frame

3) Setting

4) Problem Plot

 

The second activity on writing a story for the given Setting was very interesting. It came to our surprise.....an author was hidden inside us. All the teams had a great story to tell. It was a good experience.

 

We continued with story telling with a book where the script was covered. It was an interactive session with lots of questions and answers. Leading from one subject into another making us aware of so many different things. Few ideas also led to many real life incidents and facts. For example: Fire and its safety guidelines, Festivals and celebrations and many more. During this session we covered voice modulation which also is an important feature during story telling.

 

Guidelines and template to puppet making was very helpful as we will be using them a lot during our practical sessions.

 

Finally, all of us got a chance to put into action all the important parts into story narration. We were imaginative with different ideas, creative with different materials to make puppets and props, used lot of voice modulation, and successfully made story telling and listening a great experience. WHAT FUN!!!

 

What I drove home:

Now, introduced to a whole new world of story telling, with the help of the puppets we made during the session, I narrated the story to my children and they were so excited. We discussed so many different things. It was a very interactive session with lots to explore together.

[Topic on Habits of Mind: Respond appropriately to others feelings (Kirthana) ]

Started to think..... firstly, what are feelings? Started to daily jot down about my feelings through out the day. How am I expressing my feeling, or do I express them at all to anyone? How do I respond to my own feelings and others feelings was a huge brainstorm....Whooo!

Feelings are an important part of YOU. In order to live fully and effectively, you need many sources of information (e.g., your senses, your thoughts, your perceptions) to guide you, motivate you, and help you make sense of things.

 

For example:

1) To feel sadness in response to loss

2) To feel happiness in response to something desirable

 

Two students experience the same event on scoring 90% on a test, but interpreting that event in dramatically different ways.

One student's interpretation might be, "Wonderful! That was a tough test, I studied hard, and it paid off!"

Now, imagine the other student's interpretation to be, "Oh no! I didn't get the top score. I'm never going to get into grad school and that's terrible."

 

Probably, the first student's emotional response will be positive; the second student's negative. The event was the same for both; the differing interpretations led to the differing emotional responses.

 

Definition:  There is no specific definition. Words or even silence, at times, that express empathy and improve the state of mind with a sense of esteem, empowering them, and selfness not giving any negative feelers is responding appropriately. This ensures that the children are guided to healthy emotional growth with a good emotional vocabulary.

 

If you value their emotions, they will too.  

 

Example:

A Surf Excel advertisement...two kids walking back from school and the little girl falls in a puddle of muddy water and starts crying. The little boy then plays dramatically and falls on to the puddle and starts beating into the puddle and he gets all muddy. He gets up and tells the girl "It (as in the "puddle" is saying 'Sorry'). The girl gets her smile back on her face.

 

The boy's action and response made her feel better. What better way, we could have said or done anything. Action speaks louder than words.

 

Activity 1: Play different kinds of music that categorize sad, happy, celebration, patriotic, angry, silly, and encouraging emotions. Let the child explore each of the tunes and recognize the emotions behind each of the music would help the child to understand different emotions.

 

Activity 2: Making a painting that depicts an evening in the park with the following pictures:

- A bunch of kids playing making a circle (emotion: happy)

- Children playing the slide and waiting for their turn (emotion: patience)

- Child playing the swing, while another child crying for the swing (emotion: sad)

- A dog chasing a child (emotion: fear/ afraid)

- A child at the ice cream stand (Emotion: excitement)

 

Many more scenarios that show frustration, angry, crying, boredom and other emotions can be introduced.

 

Make small placards with all these emotions and get them to tag these placard to the painting.

Habits of Mind (Anjana)

The observation class has helped me a lot. Somewhere in my mind the theory that I read, is being correlated to the practical observation class, and, I feel enlightened :-).

My topic for HOM is "Taking Risk". I would like to share with you that, I think, I have been able to successfully incorporate the following theories I have come across:

• Blooms taxonomy
• Edgar Dales Cone of Experience
  
• Learning styles and
• Learning stages
  

If I have classified "risk" correct, it comes under the Affective Domain (Blooms Taxonomy)
I will try to give children as much as direct experiences (cone of experience)
Will incorporate the audio, visual and the kinesthetic styles (learning styles) and
Understand the four painful stages that children go through.

I will first start off by drawing attention of children by telling a story that incorporates the attitude of risk taking...ex Alibaba and the forty thieves
Then discuss about the story and introduce the word "risk" to them. Here they are passive listeners and my children are aware of the word  risk.

Then I try and give them direct experience of taking risks through games...ex the hoopla game and the pyramid game, where I give them the awareness that
Risk is

• Uncertainty of something happening or not happening and
  

• There is one sure possible outcome -- Win or lose.

Here my class becomes interactive where the children participate actively in the games. Now that their spirits are already high playing the games, I interact more and ask them their opinions and instigate them to give more examples where similar situation of taking risk arises.

Beyond this Ratnesh, I am not too sure, once the concept has been given to them (that is my children become consciously competent)... will they be able to internalize this ie. will they become unconsciously competent thus developing risk as an attitude???

• Note: If I am to deal with older children I would play the game of monopoly with them. Also would give them more examples relating to rain, learning swimming or cycling etc.
• My main objective throughout  would be to develop decision making and critical thinking skills in children.
• I have tried to incorporate my observation in Minis class of first creating awareness...give them experiences at appropriate places...and then to reflect and reinforce.

I think I am being too theoretical, (can I ask for more observation sessions?) but at the same time sure too, I will put this into proper, efficient and effective use. 

Anjana

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