Child-Centered Learning: Example Activities
Child-Centered Learning: Example Activities
Three games that illustrate some important child-centered principles.
This video looks at some basic psychological principles that underlie child-centered lessons and are important when motivating children to learn.
THANK YOU
I would like to give a big thank you to Adam Kardos for doing the voiceover.
🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸
00:00 Start
0:24 Simon Says
4:24 Race game
7:32 Blindfold game
🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸
One example from the video:
Simon Says
Most teachers would make the activity more child-centered by getting children to take turns to give the instructions instead. But when a child is giving the instructions, the children are probably not interacting with somebody who knows more than they do. The child giving the instructions is probably just using familiar language. So the children playing the game won’t be challenged to move beyond what they already know. And not much learning will be going on. The teacher, on the other hand, might say ‘Simon says point to the ceiling’ where ‘ceiling’ is a new word.
The children will be confused, and think ‘Huh?!’. `‘Huh?!’ is a beautiful sound. That is the beginning of learning. I think one of the main aims of a child-centered approach is to deliberately confuse the children, so that they think ‘Huh?!’ when they are faced with this new challenge. And we need to do this in a way that motivates the children to try and solve whatever mystery we put in their path.
In the terminology of Piaget, the children need to experience cognitive conflict, and then mentally adjust to accommodate the new information. In this case, the children will probably wonder what a ‘ceiling’ is because they are enjoying the game. The teacher can encourage the children to make guesses, and give hints, such as by saying ‘Look up!’
In this way the children are challenged to think and learn. This is pure Vygotsky. The children are interacting with the teacher during the game in order to reach their potential as learners. Notice that the teacher is not teaching. The teacher is scaffolding. The children discover the word ‘ceiling’ through the teacher’s hints. They do not directly receive this information from the teacher.
However, although playing Simon Says in this way involves cognitive conflict and scaffolding, which are important child-centered elements, it is still teacher-centered because the teacher is the center of attention. The children are constantly focused on the teacher.
🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸
🟧 David Paul links:
🔹 Language Teaching Professionals website
https://ltprofessionals.com
🔹 Facebook Group (Teaching English Around the World)
/ englishteacherssupport
🔹 Facebook page (Language Teaching Professionals )
/ languageteachingprofessionals
🔹 X
/ ltprofessionals
🔹 Linkedin Group (Teaching English Around the World)
/ 3813546
🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸🔸
🟧 Adam Kardos links:
🔹 AAS Press
https://aaspress.com/
🔹 Gamerize Dictionary
https://gamerize-dictionary.com/