Futian High School Project-Based Learning WorldTeachESL 2019
Amazing! Over 400 Chinese ESL students performed a daring active learning project within the third week together. Each student was able to perform complete sentences while being in front of their peers, and being filmed on camera. How was this accomplished in only three weeks with such confidence? We talked about something they loved – China!
“Active Learning” is, in short, anything that students do in a classroom other than merely passively listening to an instructor’s lecture. This includes everything from listening practices which help the students to absorb what they hear, to short writing exercises in which students react to lecture material, to complex group exercises in which students apply course material to “real life” situations and/or to new problems.
The term “cooperative learning” covers the subset of active learning activities which students do as groups of three or more, rather than alone or in pairs; generally, cooperative learning techniques employ more formally structured groups of students assigned complex tasks, such as multiple-step exercises, research projects, or presentations. Cooperative learning is to be distinguished from another now well-defined term of art, “collaborative learning”, which refers to those classroom strategies which have the instructor and the students placed on an equal footing working together in, for example, designing assignments, choosing texts, and presenting material to the class. Download a free copy today, “Over 30 Tools for Enhancing Lessons“
“Techniques of active learning”, then, are those activities which an instructor incorporates into the classroom to foster active learning. Try video taping your ESL students today. There are many platforms that make this process easy and fun for everyone.