WEBVTT 00:00:00.700 --> 00:00:05.800 If you are exasperated with the lack of curiosity and focus from 00:00:05.800 --> 00:00:10.840 the children you teach, then today's episode is going to give you the tools 00:00:10.840 --> 00:00:16.930 and strategies you need to reengage those students and spark curiosity. 00:00:17.140 --> 00:00:20.230 That is essential ingredient for lifelong learning. 00:00:20.930 --> 00:00:25.880 In the 14 plus years that I've been teaching in early childhood, 00:00:26.390 --> 00:00:32.240 I have seen the change in children right in front of my very own eyes. 00:00:32.940 --> 00:00:37.780 When I looked at these disengaged children, I saw that these were not 00:00:37.780 --> 00:00:42.790 children that were naughty or that were disengaged on purpose because 00:00:42.790 --> 00:00:45.190 children always want to please. 00:00:45.190 --> 00:00:45.730 Right? 00:00:46.330 --> 00:00:47.835 There was something else going on. 00:00:48.535 --> 00:00:55.345 Of course parenting over the years has changed and this generation of 00:00:55.345 --> 00:01:02.075 children have had more exposure to screens than any generation before them. 00:01:02.775 --> 00:01:07.665 So I paused and I asked myself, what can I do? 00:01:07.695 --> 00:01:10.125 How can I reengage these children? 00:01:10.815 --> 00:01:12.345 What will excite them? 00:01:13.545 --> 00:01:15.795 What will intrigue them? 00:01:16.495 --> 00:01:24.605 And what I discovered was that children love getting stuck in hands-on. 00:01:24.605 --> 00:01:30.740 Learning is the key ingredient to getting children involved in their own learning. 00:01:31.440 --> 00:01:33.390 Because screens are passive. 00:01:34.229 --> 00:01:40.440 But when you are involved in your own, in your learning, you are doing the work. 00:01:40.920 --> 00:01:44.370 And actually we were made for work. 00:01:44.759 --> 00:01:45.000 You know? 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:46.500 You know that right? 00:01:47.309 --> 00:01:50.909 When you are successful or when you're working and you've, you've, 00:01:51.059 --> 00:01:54.509 you've achieved something, you know, you've put a goal in place and you've 00:01:54.570 --> 00:01:58.859 worked towards it and you achieve your goal, that gives you satisfaction. 00:01:59.459 --> 00:02:01.289 Well, children are exactly the same. 00:02:01.949 --> 00:02:07.889 They love getting stuck in and doing the work and then seeing 00:02:08.609 --> 00:02:13.200 the product of their hard work and feeling proud of what they've done. 00:02:13.600 --> 00:02:19.239 And so when I hit on this and I realized that I've got to teach 00:02:19.989 --> 00:02:25.920 every single thing in a way where children could do the work, not me. 00:02:26.010 --> 00:02:27.870 We aren't supposed to be doing the work. 00:02:28.620 --> 00:02:30.515 Children must do the work of learning. 00:02:31.214 --> 00:02:31.504 Okay. 00:02:31.904 --> 00:02:37.604 So today I wanna give you the three strategies that I used to reengage 00:02:37.604 --> 00:02:41.294 children in my class, and I'm just gonna look at my notes for a second. 00:02:41.664 --> 00:02:43.524 So first, the hands-on learning. 00:02:44.094 --> 00:02:51.834 Let me ask you, do you remember fondly anything you ever learned at school? 00:02:51.894 --> 00:02:54.384 Do you remember those worksheets that you had to fill out? 00:02:54.444 --> 00:02:58.404 Now I'm not saying that banish all worksheets. 00:02:58.404 --> 00:03:01.554 There is a time and a place for worksheets and sometimes they are 00:03:01.554 --> 00:03:08.219 necessary, but a worksheet should not ever be our go-to strategy for teaching. 00:03:08.919 --> 00:03:12.969 There are other ways, much more exciting ways, not just for the students, but for 00:03:12.969 --> 00:03:19.419 you too, that you can actually use to get them curious, to get them interested. 00:03:19.449 --> 00:03:22.449 And it's through hands-on learning that they actually have a better 00:03:22.449 --> 00:03:25.329 understanding of the concepts that you're trying to teach. 00:03:26.029 --> 00:03:27.644 So if I think back to my childhood. 00:03:28.369 --> 00:03:31.399 I have no fond memories of filling in worksheets. 00:03:31.399 --> 00:03:35.119 In fact, I have no memories at all about anything like that. 00:03:35.629 --> 00:03:41.219 I'll tell you what I do remember, I remember, I think I was eight, 00:03:41.919 --> 00:03:48.739 seriously knitting a cover for a coat hanger and making pom-poms with a fork. 00:03:48.769 --> 00:03:49.879 That's what I remember. 00:03:50.579 --> 00:03:56.859 I remember growing beans on Window boxes on a window sill and tracking 00:03:56.859 --> 00:04:00.949 them and watching them with so much excitement and curiosity. 00:04:00.949 --> 00:04:03.649 'cause they were in front of a window with lots of light and these 00:04:03.649 --> 00:04:05.119 things were going up and up and up. 00:04:05.239 --> 00:04:09.769 And I think I was about, I don't know, eight or nine at the time. 00:04:10.469 --> 00:04:15.819 And I remember in high school in biology, the teacher brought in a tape worm. 00:04:16.519 --> 00:04:20.629 Fascinating stuff, and I laid this thing out. 00:04:20.629 --> 00:04:22.459 I, people must have thought I was a real wacko. 00:04:22.939 --> 00:04:27.119 I was lying out these things, this thing, and finding the scolex, 00:04:27.139 --> 00:04:29.179 the head of this tape worm. 00:04:29.869 --> 00:04:33.199 This was me doing the learning. 00:04:33.899 --> 00:04:35.279 That's what I remember. 00:04:35.339 --> 00:04:36.509 Doing the learning. 00:04:36.509 --> 00:04:38.549 I remember my art classes fondly. 00:04:38.549 --> 00:04:38.939 Why? 00:04:38.939 --> 00:04:42.089 Because I was creating, I was painting the pictures. 00:04:42.089 --> 00:04:45.119 I remember them, but I don't remember worksheets. 00:04:45.469 --> 00:04:47.719 The second point is about a hook. 00:04:48.439 --> 00:04:52.939 You need something to pull children in, right? 00:04:53.539 --> 00:05:01.219 It can be some living critter, it can be a picture, maybe even a, a macro 00:05:01.219 --> 00:05:07.249 shot, a really close up picture of a gross insect or something that's 00:05:07.249 --> 00:05:09.229 gonna just spark their curiosity. 00:05:09.709 --> 00:05:13.939 It could be a movie clip, it could be a piece of text. 00:05:13.939 --> 00:05:16.669 Controversial, I don't know, newspaper article. 00:05:17.464 --> 00:05:18.514 It can be anything. 00:05:19.084 --> 00:05:22.754 I remember bringing in a little felt penguin. 00:05:23.744 --> 00:05:30.074 The dog attitude of one flipper, and this penguin became the start of a story. 00:05:30.404 --> 00:05:35.729 We created a story about how this penguin may have lost its flipper, and 00:05:35.729 --> 00:05:39.344 then of course this thing went into, now let's go learn about penguins. 00:05:39.344 --> 00:05:40.334 Where do we find them? 00:05:40.334 --> 00:05:41.144 What do they eat? 00:05:41.144 --> 00:05:41.864 Where do they live? 00:05:41.864 --> 00:05:43.154 Different types of penguins. 00:05:43.574 --> 00:05:50.414 Just that one little one flippered felt, actually, it was a Christmas decoration, 00:05:51.344 --> 00:05:55.274 led to so much learning, and the kids were curious and they all came up with 00:05:55.274 --> 00:05:59.654 all these different ideas about how this penguin could have lost its flipper. 00:06:00.464 --> 00:06:03.314 Something so silly, something so simple. 00:06:03.554 --> 00:06:06.494 They just sparked these children into action. 00:06:07.195 --> 00:06:10.435 And the third point is that it had to be easy for me. 00:06:11.065 --> 00:06:14.005 There was no time to add extra to my workload. 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:19.090 It had to be easy to implement and become part of the fabric 00:06:19.300 --> 00:06:20.980 of my planning and teaching. 00:06:21.680 --> 00:06:27.290 And so I know that so many of you out there, so many teachers, it 00:06:27.290 --> 00:06:30.580 doesn't matter whether you teach in a classroom or whether you teach at 00:06:30.580 --> 00:06:34.930 your kitchen table, there's so much to get through and so many times 00:06:34.930 --> 00:06:36.820 people feel overwhelmed by everything. 00:06:37.520 --> 00:06:43.300 And so what I did was I took these strategies that I was implementing 00:06:43.300 --> 00:06:47.950 in my own class so successfully, and I've put them together in a little 00:06:47.950 --> 00:06:51.610 mini course, little mini professional development, if you wanna call it 00:06:51.610 --> 00:06:54.520 that, called Curiosity Without Chaos. 00:06:55.220 --> 00:06:56.810 And in this course I give you. 00:06:57.380 --> 00:07:02.180 The tools, the strategies, and the templates to help you plan with 00:07:02.180 --> 00:07:10.110 curiosity, to bring curiosity into everything that you do, to make it part 00:07:10.140 --> 00:07:15.900 of the fabric of your teaching and of your planning, and of your pedagogy. 00:07:16.090 --> 00:07:20.080 . So if you're watching on YouTube, I will leave a link to Curiosity without 00:07:20.080 --> 00:07:22.090 chaos in the description for you. 00:07:22.450 --> 00:07:26.530 If you're listening on podcast, I will leave it for you in the show notes. 00:07:27.230 --> 00:07:32.600 I promise you that curiosity without chaos will bring back not only 00:07:32.600 --> 00:07:38.600 the joy for you in your teaching, because once kids are engaged, 00:07:38.960 --> 00:07:41.300 teaching again becomes joyful, right? 00:07:42.000 --> 00:07:47.710 Once you get these simple tips that you can put into place without adding to your 00:07:47.925 --> 00:07:50.295 workload, everything is going to shift. 00:07:50.995 --> 00:07:55.045 And if you wanna know more about Simple Strategies to Engage students, I'm 00:07:55.045 --> 00:08:00.725 going to leave a video link somewhere here on how you can easily, engage 00:08:00.725 --> 00:08:02.270 children and get them more curious. 00:08:02.670 --> 00:08:05.820 And by the way, if you'd like to subscribe to Get Curious, my Weekly 00:08:05.820 --> 00:08:09.515 newsletter, there'll be a link for you as well in the show notes or in 00:08:09.515 --> 00:08:14.225 the description where you can sign up and get weekly inspiration from me. 00:08:14.625 --> 00:08:18.345 Until next time, be blooming curious and take care of yourself.