If you are exasperated with the lack of curiosity and focus from
the children you teach, then today's episode is going to give you the tools
and strategies you need to reengage those students and spark curiosity.
That is essential ingredient for lifelong learning.
In the 14 plus years that I've been teaching in early childhood,
I have seen the change in children right in front of my very own eyes.
When I looked at these disengaged children, I saw that these were not
children that were naughty or that were disengaged on purpose because
children always want to please.
Right?
There was something else going on.
Of course parenting over the years has changed and this generation of
children have had more exposure to screens than any generation before them.
So I paused and I asked myself, what can I do?
How can I reengage these children?
What will excite them?
What will intrigue them?
And what I discovered was that children love getting stuck in hands-on.
Learning is the key ingredient to getting children involved in their own learning.
Because screens are passive.
But when you are involved in your own, in your learning, you are doing the work.
And actually we were made for work.
You know?
You know that right?
When you are successful or when you're working and you've, you've,
you've achieved something, you know, you've put a goal in place and you've
worked towards it and you achieve your goal, that gives you satisfaction.
Well, children are exactly the same.
They love getting stuck in and doing the work and then seeing
the product of their hard work and feeling proud of what they've done.
And so when I hit on this and I realized that I've got to teach
every single thing in a way where children could do the work, not me.
We aren't supposed to be doing the work.
Children must do the work of learning.
Okay.
So today I wanna give you the three strategies that I used to reengage
children in my class, and I'm just gonna look at my notes for a second.
So first, the hands-on learning.
Let me ask you, do you remember fondly anything you ever learned at school?
Do you remember those worksheets that you had to fill out?
Now I'm not saying that banish all worksheets.
There is a time and a place for worksheets and sometimes they are
necessary, but a worksheet should not ever be our go-to strategy for teaching.
There are other ways, much more exciting ways, not just for the students, but for
you too, that you can actually use to get them curious, to get them interested.
And it's through hands-on learning that they actually have a better
understanding of the concepts that you're trying to teach.
So if I think back to my childhood.
I have no fond memories of filling in worksheets.
In fact, I have no memories at all about anything like that.
I'll tell you what I do remember, I remember, I think I was eight,
seriously knitting a cover for a coat hanger and making pom-poms with a fork.
That's what I remember.
I remember growing beans on Window boxes on a window sill and tracking
them and watching them with so much excitement and curiosity.
'cause they were in front of a window with lots of light and these
things were going up and up and up.
And I think I was about, I don't know, eight or nine at the time.
And I remember in high school in biology, the teacher brought in a tape worm.
Fascinating stuff, and I laid this thing out.
I, people must have thought I was a real wacko.
I was lying out these things, this thing, and finding the scolex,
the head of this tape worm.
This was me doing the learning.
That's what I remember.
Doing the learning.
I remember my art classes fondly.
Why?
Because I was creating, I was painting the pictures.
I remember them, but I don't remember worksheets.
The second point is about a hook.
You need something to pull children in, right?
It can be some living critter, it can be a picture, maybe even a, a macro
shot, a really close up picture of a gross insect or something that's
gonna just spark their curiosity.
It could be a movie clip, it could be a piece of text.
Controversial, I don't know, newspaper article.
It can be anything.
I remember bringing in a little felt penguin.
The dog attitude of one flipper, and this penguin became the start of a story.
We created a story about how this penguin may have lost its flipper, and
then of course this thing went into, now let's go learn about penguins.
Where do we find them?
What do they eat?
Where do they live?
Different types of penguins.
Just that one little one flippered felt, actually, it was a Christmas decoration,
led to so much learning, and the kids were curious and they all came up with
all these different ideas about how this penguin could have lost its flipper.
Something so silly, something so simple.
They just sparked these children into action.
And the third point is that it had to be easy for me.
There was no time to add extra to my workload.
It had to be easy to implement and become part of the fabric
of my planning and teaching.
And so I know that so many of you out there, so many teachers, it
doesn't matter whether you teach in a classroom or whether you teach at
your kitchen table, there's so much to get through and so many times
people feel overwhelmed by everything.
And so what I did was I took these strategies that I was implementing
in my own class so successfully, and I've put them together in a little
mini course, little mini professional development, if you wanna call it
that, called Curiosity Without Chaos.
And in this course I give you.
The tools, the strategies, and the templates to help you plan with
curiosity, to bring curiosity into everything that you do, to make it part
of the fabric of your teaching and of your planning, and of your pedagogy.
. So if you're watching on YouTube, I will leave a link to Curiosity without
chaos in the description for you.
If you're listening on podcast, I will leave it for you in the show notes.
I promise you that curiosity without chaos will bring back not only
the joy for you in your teaching, because once kids are engaged,
teaching again becomes joyful, right?
Once you get these simple tips that you can put into place without adding to your
workload, everything is going to shift.
And if you wanna know more about Simple Strategies to Engage students, I'm
going to leave a video link somewhere here on how you can easily, engage
children and get them more curious.
And by the way, if you'd like to subscribe to Get Curious, my Weekly
newsletter, there'll be a link for you as well in the show notes or in
the description where you can sign up and get weekly inspiration from me.
Until next time, be blooming curious and take care of yourself.