Active Education

One thing that has been on my mind this week is cross disciplinary education. For example, I think it would be interesting to do a crossover of English (paragraph writing) and physical education. I find that students are often restless in the classroom and while there is of course a host of reasons, one reason is that students are sitting in most if not all of their classrooms (besides physical education).

It could be beneficial to students, not only to engage their minds, but also engage or activate their bodies. I feel somehow, that activities that captivate the mind and body may increase concentration levels and reduce a lot of the mindless chatter and off topic distractions.

This week in one of my volunteer classrooms, students had to write "How To" paragraphs (which I thought was really genius by the way) where they had to practice writing an expository paragraph where they teach their reader, step by step, how to perform a certain task. Students had very creative ideas such as teaching their readers how to take care of pets (turtles, rats), how to avoid fighting with siblings, iPhone use, making eggs, etc.

While certain students had trouble coming up with both topics and ideas, I found that it was challenging having students stay on task for any given amount of time.

Sometimes when I write, or brainstorm ideas, I like to get up and move around, even write ideas on a paper that I have taped to the wall. I think therefore it could be a good idea to combine certain writing activities in English classrooms with actual active games where students have to move around and quite possibly work in teams. I have been brainstorming some ideas that could possibly work. Here are a few:

Human paragraph
Divide students into groups of 5-6 and each person will represent a sentence in a paragraph. One person is the introductory sentence, 3-4 people are the supporting detail sentences, and 1 person is the concluding sentence. Students can brainstorm and work in their groups to come up with their sentences. This could take a relay race type of structure where two teams are paired against each other. Each person is given 2 minutes to write their sentence on the board and then they have to pass the chalk/dry erase marker to the next person in line. The point of this activity is to work in a team and have students get better of thinking up ideas quickly. Teacher goes over each paragraph and shares with the class. Or can have the students read their paragraph to the class.

Stations
Class can be divided into stations based on paragraph structure. For example, there would be one station for introductory sentences, another station for supporting detail 1, 2, 3, another for concluding sentence. This may work because it puts demarcations and borders surrounding each tasks and breaks things down nicely. I think that element of quickness helps students to stay on task more easily.

Paragraph Hamburgers
This is based off of the paragraph writing model that is in the structure of a hamburger. Each time a student finishes a sentence, they have to go and stick it onto their burger. They write their introductory sentence, and stick it onto their burger. They write their first supporting detail and go and stick it onto their burger. They do this until they have finished making up their burger completely. This activity can be done in partners or groups.

This is just a start but I think combining writing and active activities could be a good way to get creative juices going.