The Five Teaching Techniques

The five teaching techniques are: Quote, Story Telling, Group Singing, Group Activity and Silent Sitting - how are these used?

Story Telling - The wonderful thing about Educare is there are no set texts or special story books required. Anything can be used to illustrate the values. With story telling the trick is to deliver the story in such a way that it captures the attention of your audience (Hint - use props, voice modulation and facial expressions) then ask searching questions that encourage your students to think about what they have heard. Let the students come up with the moral of the story and what it reflects about the characters; get them thinking for themselves. You lead and they deliver the meaning.

The following paragraph is a typical story book line - what value do you think this highlights?

"It's too late now, you've already disturbed me". grumbled Peter. "Anyway it appears you need a bit of hand, your rocket is looking a weeeeeeeelllllllllll some would say - bent".

"Do you think you would be able to help me", said Moon Bunnie. "You see I'm not mechanically minded and I would appreciate any help you could give me".

"Well when you put it like that, I guess I have no option, let me get my tool kit and call a couple of friends over and we will see what we can do". said Peter. With that Peter turned on his tail and disappeared into the tree trunk.

Excerpt taken from "The Adventures of Moon Bunnie" author Katherine Running

Hint: If you have a class of older students let them read the story themselves, or encourage them to write their own stories. Come down to or rise up to the student's level.

Group Singing - Pick up a guitar or any other musical instrument, come on give it a go! Singing promotes enjoyment and relaxation, as well as helping to promote good health, encourages discipline, creates harmony, promotes co-operation, helps with your breathing and can be just plain, good old fashioned fun. Do you need any other reason to encourage singing? Singing also encourages creativity, opens the mind and for a person who may not normally retain information easily, sometimes putting it into a song can help them relate to the topic and retain the information.

Don't just use singing in music classes, be adventurous, use it in science or even mathematics (does anyone remember the sing-song sound of the times tables, surely I'm not the only person that remembers this) use this tool and make it fun. The repetition and rhyming can assist in helping to retain information.

Hint: Get the class to make up their own song, keep it simple and easy. An example could be to give them a nursery rhyme, or a fairy tale, and put it to rap - change the entire character of the story, look for a hidden meaning to the story and bring it out in song. It can be fun and if you have a group of talented students the results can be amazing.

Quotes or Sayings - No, it does not have to be a heavy quote from some past literary genius. It can be as simple as "Help Ever, Hurt Never". Another way of using this is to offer up a conversation, for example the following conversation between an elderly person and a student, in this instance the student is challenging a senior citizen.

"You grew up in a different world" the student said, "today we have television, jet planes, space travel, nuclear energy, computers ...........". The senior citizen took advantage of a pause in the student's litany. "You're right. We didn't have those things when we were young; so we invented them! What are you doing for the next generation"?

Source - received via email - source unknown

Hint: What a great discussion point this would make in a classroom situation. It shows differences in opinions and perspectives, and I can imagine some of the comments that would be made. This conversation can be used as an example of differences and similarities between generations, highlighting the need to respect one another for what or who we are and reinforcing the importance of all generations past, present and future being responsible for laying the groundwork for the next generation to come. If the subject being taught was science or ecology, the this could be used as a discussion point on cause and effect.

Games and Activities - Activities are the cement that holds the learning experience together. We talk about it, we discuss it, we may sing about it (whatever it may be), but the activity or game is the final piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is the learning experience. Group or individual activities reinforce what is being taught. It adds interest and fun, can encourage co-operation, concentration, team-work, help develop hidden talents, teach responsibility and caring. The list goes on however it is an ideal chance to encourage and assist in developing a students self confidence.

Hint: If a class is operating in a safe environment activities and games do not need to be highly organised military operations. An example of using an activity to reinforce a lesson could be as follows; in this example the class has just completed a lesson on co-operation and teamwork. An activity to reinforce this could be balloon volleyball.

Split the team into two teams, let each team select their own team leader, use a piece of string or wool as the net to mark the centre of the court, introduce a balloon, and set the game of balloon volleyball into action. The rules are the same as beach volleyball rules. On a wet day this can be a constructive way of letting the class release pent up energy, and also exercise their limbs. But what does it teach, I hear you asking.

Teacher observation is required in this activity. From past experience one group will normally work well as a team and the other group will generally be in a state of disarray. When a certain behaviour pattern becomes apparent, call time out and discuss your observations with the teams (these observations need to be kept general and relate to the how the team interacts within the team). After sharing your observations ask each team to have a group meeting and review their strategies, communication techniques and game plan to see if there are areas they can improve on. Then bring them back to the court and let them continue. After the game have a group discussion and discuss team work and co-operation and how it affected the game.

Educare is about building a person to their full potential and this is achieved by bringing out the best in a person through encouragement and respect.

Silent Sitting - Quiet time - with younger children this can be called mat time. Silent sitting is known by a variety of different names, but whatever you choose to call it, this time is an invaluable education tool. It is a time for reflection, and harnessing ones thoughts, refocusing and checking one's breathing. It aids in memory retention, relaxing the body, and calming a person down. This is not hearsay, but has been researched and documented.

If you are unsure about the benefits of such an exercise, we invite you to try it for yourself (it will take more than one or two sessions of silent sitting to notice an improvement) and see if you can notice any difference in memory recall and memory retention after practising daily for a few months. Having said this there is more to silent sitting than just sitting in one spot for a set time doing little more than thinking about your shopping list. Nothing this good ever came quite that easy. A little effort is required and there is a set format to silent sitting, but with practice this exercise is beneficial to the mind and the body and assists in regulating the breath and focusing the mind.

It is a gentle exercise and can be used to reinforce the values brought out in the lesson plan. The benefit to the teacher is a quiet, relaxed class - what more could one ask for?

A Note To The Wise

Children learn from the examples they are set, if your words do not match your actions, children in all their wisdom will notice and question the validity of what you are saying. Let's face it teaching children is always a learning experience for ourselves.

Enjoy your teaching and learning experience!!!