Example Of Experiential Learning

At Arts-Based School I did my observation in Leni Fragakis’s third grade class. This was the first observation I had done since learning about instructional design. Since learning it, I now have a new way of observing, I pay more attention to the teacher; how she implemented the lessons, what strategies she uses, and the types of assessments she uses. This gives me a better experience because before I was just paying attention to what the students were doing and their part in the classroom and now I am paying attention to so much more. Even though it is important to watch the kids, I now also know how important it is to observe the teacher, too. I was also able to observe what I am learning in class be used in the classroom.

When you picture a classroom, what do you think of? You more than likely picture a chalkboard, desks for all the students and teacher. A new way of teaching has developed that removes students from the stereotypical environment and places they in a new and engaging environment. This is experiential education.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate my experiential learning of personal and social adjustments when confronted with life-changing events and the mechanisms utilized to effectively cope from traumatic experiences. The components supporting this piece include: confronting the problem, learning to adapt and cope, cultivating self-worth, the importance of a support system and over time change influencers. To support my understanding of personal and social adjustments, I will use the content of this paper to speak as evidence of my experiential learning derived from confronting a long-term spiritual abuse situation and process of unraveling and coping from its affects.

Through this experience, I learned that is vitally important that children in school have a creative, stimulating classroom environment. Such an environment will stimulate their minds and make them much better learners and thinkers. The classroom environment should include lots of books, visual materials and different activities in order to help them learn the material as best as possible. All these requirement should be aimed at attracting and keeping the child’s interest and promoting questioning and discussion. Expecting children, particularly young ones, to sit at a desk all day and learn is not the way to go. Children, particularly young ones, need to move around and do different activities in order to keep them engaged. Having an environment where they are being taught in ways that are fun and reel them in, will stimulate the students to do well and strive to do better.

The first setting I observed was a Pre-Kindergarten setting. The first thing I noticed was how the teacher set up routines for her students. These routines can include hanging up their coat\ backpack, placing their lunches in a bin and starting their morning work for the day. The teacher assigns her students morning work and this week’s included writing practice. Each child was given a sheet of paper to trace with their name on it. Many of the students came into the classroom late, which gave the students a disadvantage because it did not allow them enough time to finish their work. After their morning work, the class met for a morning meeting. Morning meeting usually includes the discussion of the months of the year, days of the week, the weather, songs about what they have

Classrooms environments are very important at the time of learning. According to our textbook, the environment is viewed as an established behavioral place that forms how we act and behave (Vukelich & Christie, 2016). The environment in the classroom I visited was adequate for learning because it has all the things a preschool classroom has to have according to the textbook. The classroom has a bulleting board, a dramatic play center, a writing center, tables for manipulative and games, whole group meeting area, a computer area and an art area. There was also on a wall a picture of every single child with his and her names. My visit was from 10:30 to 12:30. When I first arrived, children were in a transition from one activity to another. The next activity was to watch an ABC phonics video. All the children knew what they have to do. They had to sit nicely and quiet on the floor. Every single child knew how to sit. They crossed their legs and put their hands in their laps. When the teacher saw that all the children were sitting properly, she assumed that they were ready to learn. During this activity I observed that Matthew and Jose were not engaged with this activity because they were looking to other children instead to look to the screen. For the next activity the children had to take a tablet from a cabinet. I was surprise because every single child knew the number of the tablet they have to take. Later I noticed that it was because in the classroom every child has a

I am the proud mom of four AMAZING kids, a wife to my supportive and hard-working husband, and a dedicated educator with 19 years of creative, effective, and engaging teaching experiences. I LOVE teaching…from the moment you step into my warm, welcoming, themed classroom, to interacting and guiding every student toward personal success, to sharing in their triumphs and challenges, to fostering the “real-world” connections, and most importantly…fostering a love of learning! I work endless hours planning, researching, preparing, and implementing in order to be creative, effective, engaging, and fun for every student. I pride myself on being able to connect and build strong relationships with all of my students each year. I believe in the importance of knowing each student’s learning style, and truly understanding their personal strengths and weaknesses, as like every adult, each child is unique and learns differently and at their own pace! Further, I believe that ALL kids can LEARN! I teach each of my students the importance of taking ownership, involving

Learning is unique to each individual. Some students learn well in a structured group setting. There are visual, auditory, and hands on learners. Others find it easier to learn with one on one instruction some are capable of teaching themselves like Fredrick Douglas. An ideal educational experience would incorporate the various procedures highlighted in the video “Unschooling: the new class of learning”. These learning methods include those of Dale J. Stephens, a student who started a self-directed school and Arno Stern an educated researcher who “created a space for children to play and paint without restraint, without goal, and without competition”.

As a teacher, I want my classroom to be a progressive classroom. I want all my students, including ELLs, to learn by doing and learn by experiences. I want to build my curriculum based on my student’s experiences, interests, and encourage my students to work together cooperatively. My

Education is very important especially in this day and age. What school one attends and how they perceive school to be is a huge factor in one’s life success. There has been research done in the past few years proving that students who receive a Montessori education will prosper academically more so than those who receive a traditional education (Ryniker and Shoho, 2001). Traditional schools typically follow teacher based philosophies and the Montessori education is student centered. On average, children enjoy student based philosophy classrooms. Therefore, they are much more in tuned to what they are learning and that benefits their educational career. Having fun while learning is the key to keeping children engaged.

For me, the teaching process in constantly changing depending on the students in my class and the development each of them demonstrates. Each year will bring a new class full of students with diverse backgrounds and abilities which creates academic diversity in the classroom (Krause, Bochner, Duchesne & McMaugh, 2010). This allows students to learn from one another using a more knowledgeable other being either me as a teacher or a fellow classmate (McInerney, 2014). Engagement within the classroom is important as it will enable me to provide individual feedback and to ensure the students that learning is possible (O’Donnell et al., 2016). Through the use of real world activities children are provided with very stimulating and thought-provoking

Although this limitation can become a barrier for the experiential learning theory Rogers’ developed, it is possible for this to overcome this with patience. As the main purpose of this theory is to allow personal growth within the student, we must note that personal growth appears differently for each individual learner. The role of the facilitator is to help engage all types of students in self-motivated learning to help them improve their overall growth from significant information.

During my observation time in a kindergarten classroom, I have noticed that the students have a wide variety of abilities, attention spans, interests, and love for learning. When it comes to the teacher’s instructional strategies, she intentionally takes into consideration all of the above characteristics to make sure each student gets what they need to be most successful. During lessons students are engaged because of the teacher’s ability to implement interests of the student’s into things and giving them options. If an error occurs during a lesson, the teacher normally, allows for the student who got something wrong to try again, or to call on a friend to help them out. This way the students are still giving the answers and not the teacher just telling them the information. The teacher chooses a lot of small group instruction and centers where she can work with a small group, but then, easily monitor all the other groups to make sure they are on task and doing their work.

In the reading Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development by David Kolb (1984), he proposed that learning is a cycle process in which individuals learn through their own experiences in life. This notion of the learning cycle in which he was influenced by the ideas of three other theorists (Piaget, Dewey, and Lewinian) called it Experiential Learning Theory. Kolb’s theory was based on how people learned by imputing information and processing the information. Within this two abilities, there are four steps in which Kolb’s believe the learning process occurs. The first one he calls “concrete experience”, in which one actually does the learning right then and now. The second one is “reflective observation” when the learner thinks about what they did as a reflection of the experience. The next step is the “abstract conceptualization”, where the learner makes a generalization of the experience. The last step is “active experimentation”, where the learner puts to practice his/her understanding and adapts to it. The learner does this by taking all the first three steps of the learning cycle and seeing the results (pg. 30). Learning is a process in which individuals learn through trial and error. This process can then be reused with our prior experience to strengthen the outcome of our first experience. It is shaped as a cycle in the way we process information cognitively. This is how I understood of the reading on Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory.

Building and evaluating experiential learning mechanisms requires a deep understanding of not only general learning theory, but also the principal ways in which material can be taught to students. According to authors of Effective Instruction for Stem Disciplines: From Learning Theory to College Teaching, there are numerous traditional learning methods that are important for our background. The first, which they call study-based, is based on student focus on materials, without a strong active component. For most students, especially those of younger ages, this likely occurs most at home, where students independently study for traditional examinations. The second traditional learning method, retrieval, they describe as the conversion of study-based learning into an active learning method. Retrieval encourages students to practice accessing information—to make it so regular—that using it in later informational synthesis is already simple. The third traditional learning method, which they call schema-building, is learning based on situational practice, ensuring that students can appropriate handle the real-life aspects and applications of a concept (Mastascusa et al., 2011).