Engaging Learning Revisited
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Academic Year 2020-2021
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Academic Year 2020-2021
Latest Stories
Marshmallow Challenge 2.0: can you actually “prototype” a thought?
Think of these components: spaghetti, marshmallow, tape, string, 18 minutes and a bunch of highly-focused people sitting, standing, screaming, laughing, hopefully not crying. If you are familiar with design thinking methods, you might instantly recognize these as part of a well-known quick-prototyping experiment known as the Marshmallow challenge. The idea behind the challenge that became popular following Tom Wujec’s […]
Why killing your inner “I don’t know” is a good idea
One day, one of my students (let’s call him Yuta) had a problem. As part of home project his class was asked to think of any extraordinary school rules which they thought were too harsh or drove them bananas. If you ever attended a public school in Yuta’s home country, you will instantly know what […]
Vision Sketching: If … was a picture, it would look like…
Why do we remember faces and objects, but often forget names and written words? That’s because the human brain understands things which are concrete and visual, thus processing and remembering pictures much better than words, sentences or sounds. Visual thinking is key to effective learning and long-term retention. Before beginning a new topic or even […]
“Sneak a Peek”: The King of Questioning
This problem-solving activity requires little more than a couple of sets of colorful pictures or photos. The aim of the challenge is for each group to try and reconstruct an exact copy of an image by asking “5W and 1H Questions” (Who-What-Where-When-Why-How). The catch is that only one person in each group can look at […]
“The Six Thinking Hats”: Learning to Learn More
Six Thinking Hats is a problem-solving system designed by Edward de Bono, a psychologist, author, and consultant who pioneered the technique in his book Six Thinking Hats. It is a tool for group discussion and individual thinking involving six colored hats. “Six Thinking Hats” and the associated idea of parallel thinking provide a means for groups to plan […]
Visualize & Think Critically… with Domino Blocks
Why domino blocks? Physical objects (such as colorful wooden domino blocks) can helps students better understand abstract concepts through visualization and higher-order thinking, in addition to improving their teamwork and communication skills. Students were asked to form teams and come up with their brief summaries of a reading text or its specific paragraphs. The product […]
“Tapioca” isn’t just your favorite drink!
Steps: (1) Students were split into teams of 4-5 people; (2) Students took turns and read the given text out aloud. After reading each paragraph, teams had to select ONE word that would capture the main idea of a given paragraph. Students needed to consistently ask a question “Why is this word important?”. (3) By […]