Active Learning and Your Child

1. Active Learning and Your Child Mrs McGuigan 2014

2. What is Active Learning? • Active learning is seen as an appropriate way for children and young people to develop vital skills and knowledge and a positive attitude to learning. • Active learning is learning which engages and challenges children and young people’s thinking using real-life and imaginary situations. It takes full advantage of the opportunities for learning presented by: • spontaneous play • planned, purposeful play • investigating and exploring • events and life experiences • focused learning and teaching.

3. Continued... • Active learning has long been an established approach in early years settings, and when asked to reflect on what active learning might look like in early primary school, delegates to a Curriculum for Excellence conference for early years suggested: • 'A true building on experiences in nursery. Hands-on independent play with appropriate skilled intervention/teaching.' • 'Children learn by doing, thinking, exploring, through quality interaction, intervention and relationships, founded on children’s interests and abilities across a variety of contexts. All combining to building the four capacities for each child.' • 'Environments that offer differential play and challenge, staff who are well informed and able to challenge learning, child-centred and building on previous experiences, fun absolutely essential, children planning and evaluating their learning.'

4. Continued... • Active learning can support learners' development of the four capacities in many ways. For example, they can develop as: • successful learners through using their imagination and creativity, tackling new experiences and learning from them, and developing important skills including literacy and numeracy through exploring and investigating while following their own interests • confident individuals through succeeding in their activities, having the satisfaction of a task accomplished, learning about bouncing back from setbacks, and dealing safely with risk • responsible citizens through encountering different ways of seeing the world, learning to share and give and take, learning to respect themselves and others, and taking part in making decisions • effective contributors through interacting together in leading or supporting roles, tackling problems, extending communication skills, taking part in sustained talking and thinking, and respecting the opinions of others.

5. The Practical Context • There is a range of practical contexts and wider opportunities within which children and young people can develop a breadth of skills. These may include: • Enterprise in education activities, courses and programmes enabling young people to build the skills associated with enterprise, entrepreneurship and employability • Learning out of doors • Sustainable development activities including environmental and community activity and participation in the Eco-Schools programme • Cultural and creative activities including music or dance classes, drama and musical productions • Health promoting school activities • Out of school hours learning • Community sports and leisure activities

6. The Practical Context • Specific opportunities such as Skills for Work qualifications, Duke of Edinburgh’s Award or ASDAN • Work placements and work shadowing where Curriculum for Excellence offers the flexibility for a more individualised approach which is relevant and meaningful for young people providing opportunities for them to consider the skills they will need in advance of their placement, to practise and develop their skills, and to reflect on their experience post-placement • School/college partnerships which provide opportunities for young people to develop skills in a relevant, work-related environment, national training programmes such as Get Ready for Work which provide young people with confidence and skills for learning, life and work to enable them to engage with the labour market.

7. In School • Give the learner feedback on their incomplete understandings and encourage them to fix this, for example by helping each other. • Give the teacher feedback on which learners understand, and who needs help • Develop thinking skills such as analysis problem solving, and evaluation • Help learners to use their learning in realistic and useful ways, and see its importance and relevance • Leading Learners Week • Bloom’s Taxonomy

8. At Home • The key to active learning at home is..... INDEPENDENCE! • Developing questioning using Bloom’s Taxonomy

10. And Finally Any questions?