Hello fellow art educators!
As art teachers, we try to foster a safe, comfortable, supportive, exciting, and hands-on learning environment that children needed to thrive. I have always been a hands-on learner and found the “drill and kill” method in many areas of traditional schooling to be ineffective ever since I was young. FISD (2016) mentioned long term memory penetration arriving from motivation, activity, and self-reflection along with others. When it comes to motivation, I do my best to provide my students with choices, real world connections, and investigation opportunities. Art lends itself to this very well as I'm sure you know. Many of the teaching methods we implement every day in the art room are meant to establish long lasting connections and increase knowledge retention.
Establishing a multi-sensory “hands-on” method to explore topics is commonplace in the art classroom. This creates an active learning environment to support student learning and increase knowledge retention. I try to give my students as many opportunities as possible to make connections, explore ideas, and assess their work. One of the best methods I've found is the use of sketchbooks. At the end of each project, my students take time to reflect in their sketchbooks. The sketchbooks have about twenty different reflection prompts that students get to choose from. Not only is there a writing section, but also a drawing section accompanying the written response. Students are able to reflect on their creative choices, new vocabulary, art concepts, and more within their sketchbooks. If this is finished early, my students are also allowed to create a “compliment card” for another student. They take a compliment card form and write specifically what they like about another student’s artwork and why. This allows students to not only reflect on their own work, but others as well. Students really enjoy the boost of confidence they get when receiving a compliment card and are encouraged to do their best work by their peers.
What do you think is the most successful "hands-on" teaching tool you use in your classroom?
A key component of cognitive science is the mental representation of one’s world. The way someone sees the world informs their understanding of the information they take in. The way that we process, store, and retrieve information is done using mental representation. The five main mental representations are images, concepts, rules, logic, and analogies. Two of the most frequent mental representations I use in my classroom are images, and connectionism. Images are visuals that play an important role in the processing of information. Visual representations can provide more information than verbal descriptors. Thagard, P. (2019). Cognitive Science (chapter 4.5) “Psychological experiments suggest that visual procedures such as scanning and rotating employ imagery, and neurophysiological results confirm a close physical link between reasoning with mental imagery and perception. Imagery is not just visual, but can also operate with other sensory experiences such as hearing, touch, smell, taste, pain, balance, nausea, fullness, and emotion.”
As art teachers, images and visuals are crucial our teaching. A picture really is worth a thousand words. The subtleties that are in images are often not able to be expressed in words in a simple way. It is important to not only use images in lessons, but also throughout the classroom. There are so many uses from reminding students of classroom processes, how to use materials, key vocabulary, and more.
Connectionism is the network of one’s mental links that are used for understanding mental processes involving parallel connections. Thagard, P. (2019). Cognitive Science (chapter 4.6) “Such processes include aspects of vision, decision making, explanation selection, and meaning making in language comprehension.” Using previously established connections are a great jumping off point to build more and stronger educational connections to new content. Connections are important for knowledge retention. If a student is able to connect to something in their personal lives in the classroom, they are more likely to remember it. When looking at artwork or an artist’s career I often ask students to make connections to an experience, their own lives, or a story they have read. Students also make connections to their peers’ experiences and artwork as well. Creating opportunities to ask questions, make inferences, and create connections are ways I try to foster strong connections between my students and the information.
What do you think is the mental representation you use the most in your classroom? Why do you think you use it the most?
Game-based learning takes content of new or previously learned information and incorporates it into playable software. The game can give the player points for correct answers, keep track of progress through levels or a progress bar, or even through the use of a leaderboard. Educators enjoy the use of game-based learning to engage their students. Games encourage players to complete tasks, stay focused, and memorize content. Game-based learning is a great tool for reviewing or studying content and extending learning of previously taught concepts.
Game-based learning uses mental representations to help connect learners to the content. Images are visual representations that provide more information than verbal descriptions. Gamifying content helps students to connect visuals to taught information and help remember content in the learning process. Rules can be solidified in the learning process with the use of game-based learning. Rule-based systems like “If...Then…”, multiplication rules, and formulas can easily be reviewed and studied through games. Analogies can be made and understanding can be strengthened through gamification. Players can be asked to compare two similar things in order to better understand and make connections in the learned content.
I find that many educational games are centered more on the STEM subjects than the arts, but there are some great options! For example, I was having a difficult time having my fifth grade students take their art assessments seriously. I know this is because formal assessment in art at this age are not common and grades of "specials" are not the focus at home. I ended up using Kahoot for student assessment to see if that would make a difference. Kahoot allows students to compete against each other using points in a fun game. I was getting much better participation and students actually began looking forward to these assessments. Kahoot was a game changer for me and I truly began to appreciate gamification through this process.
What educational games do you use in your classroom? Are there non-digital games that you use as well?
If you're looking for a great art educator that keeps brain science in mind, check out Cassie Stephens' Blog: https://cassiestephens.blogspot.com/
Resources:
Findlay, J. (2016, August 12). Game-based learning vs. gamification: Do you know the difference?. Training Industry.
Thagard, P. (Spring, 2019, Edition). Cognitive science. In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.
Yao, Y.Y. (n.d.). Concept formation and learning: A cognitive informatics perspective. University of Regina
Forney Independent School District (2016). How We Learn - Forney ISD
YouTube
Lueck, S. (2020) The Science of Learning: 5 Things to Literally Keep in Mind
Dashe & Thomson - https://www.dashe.com/blog/learning/five-brain-facts-learn/
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