NOTETAKING GUIDES: LEARNING ACTIVITIES

What are learning activities?

• Means for achieving objectives!

Why are they important in curriculum development?

• To achieve aims, goals and objectives.
• To indicate to others how to implement content/ curriculum.

Interpret

• "A child or an adult . . . learns not alone by doing but by perceiving the consequences of what he[/she] has done in their relationship to what he[/she] may or may not do in the future . . . In seeing how his[/her]acts change the world about him[/her], he[/she] learns meaning of his[/her] powers and the ways in which his[/her] purposes must take account of things . . . With experience of this kind, there is that growth within experience which is all one with education." -- Mayhew and Edwards

Learning Activities

• Are recitation, reading and listening activities?
• Are they the only classroom activities?
• Do they get students involved in learning?

Discussion - Learning Activities

• In curriculum development, planners can readily prescribe the learning activities that students will be engaged in, but they can only hope these activities will result in the desired experiences.
• In reality, content and activity never exist apart from one another.
• Activities are clearly specific enough to provide instructional personnel with a sense of the curriculum planner's intent, while being sufficiently indefinite to allow for detailed development and execution in accordance with the teacher's instructional style and personality.

Examples of Learning Activities

• Objective - Generalize war as a human experience.
• Create maps of battles and illustrate strategies.
• Write an imaginary journal entry of a soldier at the front.
• View Private Ryan.
• Interview a war veteran on their war experiences.
• Photocopy cartoons depicting attitudes toward war.

Narrowly focused activities vs achieving multiple objectives?

• Learning becomes more meaningful if we can use activities that integrate a number of objectives into an integrated whole.

Key Point

• Philosophical assumptions about society, the individual, learning, and the nature of knowledge demand continual examination in planning learning activities.
• Why?

Foundations and Learning Activities

• Will the activity move the student closer to a true view of society and culture?
• Will the activity help the student to clarify the conditions of his/her own existence?
• Will the activity have a tendency to broaden or constrict one's perceptions?
• Will the activity strengthen the knowledge base of the student?

Should interest be built into activity?

• Would you want to do the activity?
• Would you want your children or friends to complete the activity?

Boring but Foundational Activities

• Keyboarding to desktop publishing.
• Turning soil for gardening.
• Cleaning the kitchen for baking.
• Physical training for sports.

Organization and Learning Activities

• Step by step in proper sequence.

Tyler's Criteria for Organization

• Continuity
• Sequence
• Integration

Developing Activities

• Explain the steps an individual should experience in seeking employment.
• Explain mechanical linkage.

Multiple objective activities

• Fastening
• Employment

Why are they learning activities important in curriculum development?

• To achieve aims, goals and objectives.
• To indicate to others how to implement content/ curriculum.