This just in from Robert Harrell:
Are we fearful of fun? I thought all of you would be interested in this article. It originally appeared in the Washington Post and deals with the necessity of fun in order to learn.
Robert
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/learning/why-fun-matters-in-education.html
My guest is Sean Slade, director of Healthy School Communities, a program of the ASCD, an educational leadership organization.
By Sean Slade
Why do we assume that learning only occurs when kids are serious and quiet?
This anti-fun vein evident in education editorials and discussion boards highlights a fundamental issue in education today and, in fact, has been with us for centuries.
The belief remains strong that learning can only take place when kids are quiet and the work laborious, that any activities where engaged kids seem to be enjoying themselves must be superfluous, and that teachers who make learning fun run the risk of being declared unprofessional.
This thinking is having an adverse effect on what kids learn and how they are taught.
Let’s look at the responses of readers to recent education articles and blogs:
….you made an interesting point about students learning physics by visiting nuclear power plants. The custodial staff at these plants gets a tour every day, yet do they turn into physicists? Engineers? Or even Technicians? Hardly. They remain custodians.
Authentic Learning, Washington Post, 03/26/10
More touchy feely nonsense that gives kids a FALSE sense of the real world. This is just like NOT keeping score in kiddie soccer and giving everyone a trophy.
Comfortable Students Leads to Engaged Students, Whole Child Blog (http://blog.wholechildeducation.org), 03/09/10
Almost everything a school assigns these days requires the internet— don’t teachers and administrators understand that kids cannot stay focused with the world (literally) at their fingertips? TV, games, iPods vs. school, Washington Post, 01/21/10
Is there any evidence to back up the notion that learning can and should be fun, or is this a deviation of our Protestant and Puritan heritage that declares that fun is the work of the devil and so anything worthwhile cannot be also fun?
Brain research suggests that fun is not just beneficial to learning but, by many reports, required for authentic learning and long-term memory.
Neurologist and educator Judy Willis’s book “Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from a Neurologist and Classroom Teacher” (ASCD, 2006) is one of many that have highlighted the learning benefits of fun. Here are just a few excerpts:
The truth is that when the joy and comfort are scrubbed from the classroom and replaced with homogeneity, and when spontaneity is replaced with conformity, students’ brains are distanced from effective information processing and long-term memory storage.
The highest-level executive thinking, making of connections, and “aha” moments are more likely to occur in an atmosphere of “exuberant discovery,” where students of all ages retain that kindergarten enthusiasm of embracing each day with the joy of learning.
So fun actually seems to promote learning. It increases dopamine, endorphins, and oxygen! The human brain and body respond positively to laughter with the release of endorphin, epinephrine (adrenaline), and dopamine, and with increased breathing volume (more oxygen). When a lesson starts with humor, there is more alerting, and the subsequent information is attached to the positive emotional event as an event or flashbulb memory.
More excerpts on the brain and engagement:
Optimal brain activation occurs when subjects are in positive emotional states or when the material holds personal meaning, connects to their interests, is presented with elements of novelty, or evokes wonder. This is why attentiveness is so closely linked to positive emotional cueing and personal meaning. When there is connection to prior knowledge or positive emotional experience, new information passage through the limbic system will be enhanced. The thalamus will then “decide” to pay attention to the information.
What happens if students aren’t just bored, but afraid or hungry or in pain? They are not only ‘not having fun, but they are in varying states of discomfort and anxiety.’ Laura Erlauer, in her book The Compatible Classroom (ASCD, 2003), explains that stress affects student attention as well and their learning:
High levels of cortisol produced by long-term stress caused shrinkage of the hippocampus, resulting in memory impairment.
Eric Jensen, another noted author in the field of brain-based learning, echoed this link between engagement, dopamine, and learning, but stressed that learning worked best when the activity was intrinsically meaningful to the individual. He notes in his book Teaching with the Brain in Mind (ASCD, 2005):
The task has to be behaviorally relevant to the learner, which is why the brain will not adapt to senseless tasks.
So if fun actually leads to engagement, meaning and purpose, and, yes, learning, what is the answer for education? Should we create courses based only around what is deemed enjoyable by today’s generation?
No, but we should look at the process of how current courses are taught and delivered. Ultimately, we should resist the knee-jerk urge to declare something that is fun to be educationally inferior.
Fun means engagement, doing and learning what has meaning and purpose, and it means being challenged. Embracing this belief should have a profound effect on what and how we teach.
http://edge.ascd.org/_Are-we-fearful-of-fun/blog/2378586/127586.html
The Problem with CI
Jeffrey Sachs was asked what the difference between people in Norway and in the U.S. was. He responded that people in Norway are happy and
5 thoughts on “Fun”
Thanks for posting this, Ben. Here are my favorite quotes from the article:
Brain research suggests that fun is not just beneficial to learning but, by many reports, required for authentic learning and long-term memory.
The truth is that when the joy and comfort are scrubbed from the classroom and replaced with homogeneity, and when spontaneity is replaced with conformity, students’ brains are distanced from effective information processing and long-term memory storage.
The highest-level executive thinking, making of connections, and “aha” moments are more likely to occur in an atmosphere of “exuberant discovery,” where students of all ages retain that kindergarten enthusiasm of embracing each day with the joy of learning.
Optimal brain activation occurs when subjects are in positive emotional states or when the material holds personal meaning, connects to their interests, is presented with elements of novelty, or evokes wonder. This is why attentiveness is so closely linked to positive emotional cueing and personal meaning.
The evidence for CI/TPRS in a light-hearted environment simply keeps piling up. I know that Ben has occasionally questioned whether CI/TPRS is compatible with the current educational structure and climate. (Probably not) But we can’t afford to abandon education to the minions of Camazotz. (I know, I keep coming back to that image; it’s either that or Mordor.) Our island of sanity may be the only thing keeping some of our students afloat – I know one mother credits what goes on in my German class with literally saving her son’s life because his other classes were sending him into depression. (If true, that is so overwhelming I can’t process it. But I have seen this kid blossom in the two years he’s been in German class; where there was some real anger I now see smiles and laughter.)
I do know that last night at our Open House, parent after parent told me how much their children love German (class and language). They also, nearly every one of them, told me about their children speaking German around the house – even the ones who are the quietest in class. One that I remember in particular told me that recently she asked her son where he was going, and he replied something totally unintelligible that sounded “really bad” to her. Then he laughed and said he had just told he was on his way to do the laundry. He deliberately tries to make the German sound horrible when he’s doing something she wants him to do. He’s having fun with the language!
Robert, you said, “parent after parent told me how much their children love German (class and language)”.
That is truly awesome!!
Here’s a question for you. Slade quotes Jensen from Teaching with the Brain in Mind. Here’s another Jensen quote from that book.
“Either you can have your learners’ attention, or they can be making meaning, but never both at the same time.”
What do you make of this in the context of a CI class? While they are listening, aren’t they making meaning? Or, is it the effort to produce that causes a sifting of the input and allows them to make meaning?
I have to admit that I have never really gotten a thorough understanding of this whole “negotiating/constructing meaning” thing. “Negotiating meaning” sounds like we spend our time conducting a business deal on what a word means. “Constructing meaning” sounds like we are building a house. Neither of those describes, to me, what goes on in acquisition. I know the whole thing about pointing to something that has four legs, a seat and a back and saying “Stuhl”, then pointing to one that’s slightly different and doing the same thing, then repeating the process. [Okay, I know that’s probably a poor example, but work with me.] I guess the listener takes that input and “constructs” the meaning of “chair”?
Is Jensen saying that a learner must already understand you to give you his attention? How, then, do they acquire the necessary input to construct meaning? If we’re talking about output – or expected output – I can accept the statement. I’ve read that in a normal conversation between two people who are fluent in the same language, most of the time the silent partner isn’t really listening but formulating a reply. If it takes more concentration to formulate a reply because of processing issues, then any attention to the speaker is lost.
Great read…DANKE for posting it!
If anyone out there wants to see this in action, especially if you live in the Midwest, visit the Concordia Language Villages this summer. Most villages are located near Bemidji, Minnesota, and are open to visitors. There are also on-site summer courses for language teachers, and it’s a great opportunity to learn a lot of fun language-learning activities and authentic songs for our classrooms. This summer they are celebrating 50 years of fun language learning!
And on the subject of meaning construction…
some great summer reading would be Ayn Rand’s essays on objectivism and epistemology. When we really teach a word, such as “chair,” our sound touches the unique image that each of our students’ memory keeps for that object, and hook the word from the target language onto it. These images are often emotionally-laden, and that is something Eric Jensen so clearly explains in Teaching with the brain in mind–another great summer read!