Wonderful Imaginations

 

I am constantly thinking of new inventive ideas in order to stimulate the students oral communication skills, imaginations, role playing activities, and opportunties for teamwork and sharing. A while ago I took tongue depressors and hot glued velcro on the ends of the tongue despressors. Today I finally decided to put them out in order to see what the students would do with them.

 

A couple of girls in the morning class used them to create a variety of shapes. Due to the fact I took pictures of what they created for their learning stories and they are in the pictures I can not put them on the blog. They created houses, squares, picture frames, a church, triangles, rectangles and I named one of the shapes as a pentagon for the girls.

 

Then I put them out for the afternoon class. It took a few minutes but then finally two boys took the same activity and they created a maze with the tongue drepressors. Next they went and added some of the various community helper vehicles and some of the Lego people. This is where there was lots of problem solving going on, as well as roll playing. They decided that there was a police officer and they were helping people because there was a big accident on the highway and they needed to get the cars off the road and people to the hospital. What wonderful oral communication skills were exhibited during this centre.

 

 

 

The learning that took place at this particular centre was far more important than any worksheet or teacher directed activity. Whenever I enter a play situation, it is as a listener. Then we I feel there is a need to stimulate more conversation I do so by asking probing questions and to assist the students to take on various roles when they engaged in play situations.