Transcription
The analogy is an excellent experiential learning activity to show students the benefits of asking questions and working with their partner. But it's an interactive lecture, not a hands-on activity. Students aren't running around picking up things or moving things around or doing anything except for looking at an image of something and trying to figure out what it is.
So, the activity works really well if you have a large group of students in a big, giant room and you want to run an activity for all of them. So, it's a good way maybe even to start your uh opening exercises for boot camp, or it can be done later in the year, or it can just be done as a part of the boot camp activities. But the students again aren't running around; they're sitting down and they're participating in this interactive lecture. And also, that means that it can't be scored. So, it's not one of the things that students will do for points at boot camp. It's just a way of reinforcing the concepts that they're learning.
There's three objectives. First, students learn that it takes time and patience to understand challenging concepts, and they're not expected to learn and see it right away. It takes some time.
For objective number two, students learn that challenging concepts require a willingness to learn, a willingness to ask questions, and a willingness to work with their partner. So, you're going to get it; it just takes some time if you try, if you ask questions, and you get help or give help to other people.
And objective number three, students learn it's their responsibility once they see something, once they understand something, to help other people get it as well. They shouldn't yell out the answer and ruin the, you know, the learning process for other people. But when the time is right, they need to turn around and help other people get it.
Watch a demonstration video of me doing it with teachers, but don't worry that I'm doing this with teachers; it's really easy to adapt it to with students. Also, keep in mind the PowerPoint that I'm using in the video can be downloaded from my website.
A couple rules: Number one, no talking to your partner. And number two, don't yell out. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. I'm going to give you guys an image, and we're going to have five different rounds for this activity. So, here we go. Let's begin. Don't yell out.
Round one. Let's start this out right now. Raise your hand, don't yell out though, if you know exactly what you're looking at. Hands nice and high. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight people. Eight people out of approximately what, 300 or so? Okay, eight of you guys. Nice. Great. That was round one. Done.
Right, here comes round two. In round two, I'm going to give you some direct instructions. I'm going to tell you what you're not looking at. You're not looking at topography, so you're not looking at maps or oceans or anything like that. You're also not looking at whatever you want it to be. So, if you're thinking like, "I think it's a butterfly," because I think like in squashes, it's not. It's actually feeling very specific. Remember, don't talk to your partner. Um, it's also not Jesus. There's a thing online, you look and you blink and you see Jesus. Not Jesus. And it's all not a skull or an x-ray. I tell my students, if you see a skull or an x-ray, go see the counselor. Like, there's no skull in front of you at all.
So, I gave you some information about what's not. Go ahead and raise your hand without yelling out if you know exactly what you're looking at. Hands nice and high. Two, three, four, five, six, seven. Keep them up high. I can see it. Let's say that's about 22. Great. Round two is over.
Round three. Round three, I want you to ask me questions, right? But nothing that gives it blatantly away. So, if it was butterflies, which it is not, don't say, "Is it a small flying insect that's colorful?" That would ruin it for everybody else. So, raise your hand nice and high. And basically, because it's hard to hear everybody, go ahead and yell out your, your question about what this is. All right, what's your question? Yes, the blue, the object we're looking at, white? It's a little bit of both. So, it's, it's actually both the black and the white. Um, but I'll tell you what, it's, it's not zoomed in. So, thinking like, "Oh, is it kind of zoomed in?" It's not zoomed in. I have not altered the image at all. Remember, no question that gives away other questions. Yes, the question was, what's the percentage? It's the main part. So, the main middle part is the part you're looking for. The, the, the key to the image is right there. To no one big? It's not like a little tiny piece in the corner. It's a great question. Ask me some more questions. Back there, is it the whole thing or is it just a piece of it? It's the main piece of something that you definitely know everybody in this room knows has seen one of these in real life. Yes, sir, white shirt. Is it an animal? It is an animal, right? That's a great question. Now we're getting that down. Don't ask, "Is it this animal?" That would give it away. You're definitely looking at an animal. Back there, last question, nice and loud please. Large? It's a very large animal. Not like elephant size, but it's definitely bigger than dog sort of. I'm going to cut you short right there. Raise your hand without yelling out exactly what you look at. Round three was over. Great. Let's say that's around 50, maybe even more. Hands down. No talking partner yet.
Okay, right now, round four. I'm going to give you the outline of where I want you to focus. All right, round four, here it comes. Want you to focus right here. Oh, all right. Raise your hand, round four, exactly what you're looking at. Wait, let's call that 250. My hands down. All right, raise your hand if you do not know what that is. Good for you.
So, here's the deal. I do this. This is my friend, but I did this activity with so many people. I did the AP conference, thousand people in the room. Very few people ever raised their hand, right? No one was said, "Why?" "Why don't people want to raise their hand?" Everyone, first of all, it's the question. Never ask that question to your students. The question I asked was, "Who doesn't know what this is?" I don't be doing something. All right, who doesn't know? Who's the idiot? Raise your hand. Nice. He doesn't get this stuff. Like, the question is a bad question. And here's the deal. Than, than you for having the guts, dude. That's awesome. He raised his hand. I promise you, there is 20 people around you out there who have no clue, right? And they didn't have the guts to raise their hand. And here's the biggest problem in education, and this is a big deal. Students won't say, "I'm not getting it." Right? They won't be, "I'm totally lost." Because they don't, they don't feel bad. So, they, they don't want to say, "I'm not getting it." And so, you'll have these groups of students all over the place that I, I don't know who's getting and not getting it. And that's a problem.
So, we got round five. Most effective teaching strategy of all time. I want you to go back to that partner, right? So, you're going to go back to this jail over here and you're going to do this. You're going to say, "Hey, you know what this is?" And your partner is going to say yes or no. And if they say yes, because they have a sense of the lie, ask them some questions to make sure they're not lying to you. If they say no, like, listen, just tell them what it is. Don't yell it out. This goes, "No, it's due." Like, whatever. So, you got only 45 seconds. Talk to that partner. Make sure they know exactly what this is. Round. Do you know what it is? What is it? I know what it is because I'm from an island and we see a lot of those animals on the island. Very. Oh, you on the farm? I grew up on a farm. Amazing. And that animal has so many uses. It's such a useful and diverse animal. 10, 9. You had one as a pet? You had one as a pet? Oh, had one as dinner. Well, that too. One. Perfect. Round five. Exactly what you look. Let's say that's around 30. Probably a few students who are still a little while. That's okay. Okay.
This, here we go. This is experiential learning. What you just experienced over the last about 7 and a half minutes is exactly what your students experience in the classroom. Exactly the same. The emotions you have, the feelings, the big moment like, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it." It's exactly what your students experience every single day in school. But the activity is not, is a waste of time unless you do the next step, which is the debrief, right? That's the key to experiential learning is the debrief. So, let's debrief this activity and talk about how it relates to the classroom. Here we go.
What happened in round one and how's like the classroom? Round one, what happened? Yeah, I said, "Okay, who knows who this is?" That's like a pre-assessment. Very few students get it right away. Maybe there's like, you know, one kid like, "Yeah, I, I, I know what that is. I heard about that. I studied that. I watched a video on YouTube. I get that content." But very few students did it right away, right? And so, I gave you some direct instruction, and it went from 8 to 22. So, direct instruction moves your students forward. And then what happened in round three, guys? Remember? Yeah, I let you guys ask me questions. We went from 22 to 50. So, questions move you forward, right? Questions. Here's my favorite part of this activity. This is great. If you would think there's anybody who would ask questions, it would be a room full of educators, right? Think about. I say, "Okay, ask me questions." You would think every single one of you, "I love questions." I tell my students, "Ask questions all the time." But ask yourself, to be honest, why didn't you ask questions? I got basically eight questions from different people. Eight questions of a room full of 300 people. So, I ask yourself, why didn't you ask questions? You didn't know what to ask. It wasn't that you were disengaged. It was you're like, "I don't have enough information to even formulate a question yet." So, you can't get mad at students when they don't ask questions because sometimes they don't have enough info yet. That's fine. So, questions move us forward.
It was in round four, that big aha moment. What happened in round four? You guys remember? Yeah, that was the outline. So, when I explain it with a Venn diagram, when I say, "Okay, here's the strategy, here's a way to remember that you're going to get," then the dude like, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it." But here's the key. Here's the key. What I'm talking about, there are still going to be pockets of students who aren't getting it. That's why round five is the most effective teaching strategy by far. Round five is we have a chance to check with another person because I can't walk to every student in my room. I mean, I'm from California. My smallest class is 32 students. But there's zero chance that I can talk to each individual student, "Do you see who this is? Do you see what this is?" You, I've got to have some other strategies. And so, in my class, my students pair up a whole lot.
So, I call this the cow analogy. Why? What is this? This is a cow, right? It's a cow. I never told that to you. Now, oh, now it is. He, it's cow, right? There's the eye, there's an eye. The nose is the easiest thing to see. But this, I call this the cow analogy. That's everything to do with school. Now, a couple questions. Are you smarter if you saw the cow first? Yes. I'm sure there's eight of you like, [Applause] yeah. No, some students see it right away. Some take time. It doesn't matter when you see it. It has that. It doesn't matter as long as you did. Now, here's the big question. Here's what I want you to focus on. What strategies did you use? Go back in your mind, experience your learning. What did you experience? What did you do to see the cow? Specifically, right? There's four things I want you to notice that you did. All right, number one, when I put the image up there and you couldn't, you didn't know what it was, what's the first thing you did? Did you put your head down? No. First thing, if you're like, "Okay, what is this?" You kept trying. So, number one, if you're getting, if you're not sure about something, you're trying to. Number one, you got to stay engaged. You got to keep trying to get into. Number two, you got to do what we did in round three. What you guys do? Three, ask questions. So, stay engaged, ask questions. And we do round five, get help, right? You can learn anything if you stay engaged, ask questions, get help. Notice I am not teaching this by saying it to students. I'm having them experience like, "Oh yeah, you're right." Like, "I, I, I saw this," and that's the process of learning. You're exactly right. And the last one's my favorite part. I'm not sure about you, but the last one, my favorite part. There's another reason why you saw. And it's, it's, you know, detail. If I went out in the hallway and I grabbed some random person who hasn't been in here and I showed it to them, what would they say? They go, "I don't know what it is." And you guys would be like, "No, I can't believe you doesn't know." Right? The difference between you and the person in the hallway is not intelligence. It's not IQ. It's attendance. This activity is about attendance. If you're not here, you're going to feel like you're not getting it. Kids, kids will be like, "Mr., I'm so lost. I have no idea what's going on." You've been gone for three days. You're not dumb. You're actually really smart. But when you're not here, there's this feeling like, "I don't, I'm not seeing the cow. I'm not getting this." Right? And that's a crappy, gross feeling to have.
So, one quick activity drives home four key skills: stay engaged, asking questions, working with your partner, getting help, and attendance, all in one activity. The debrief section, it's important to discuss the benefits of working with other people and going through the steps of learning. So, you go down over each round, what happened and why, and how is that like the classroom?
So, round one, who saw what this was in the very beginning? And how's that like the classroom? The answer is, it's like a pre-assessment. Some students get things right away. Why? Well, for whatever reason, they just get it right away. That's awesome, right? In round two, I gave you some information, a little bit of, you know, direct instruction. It was helpful, but not very helpful. Very few people start getting it in round two. In round three, is asking questions. Questions move you forward. The idea of asking questions is a good thing. So, you talk about, "Who, why are questions so important?" Well, you know, when you, other people ask questions, you listen to their question, and questions help you figure out what things are. And you talk about the idea that, you know, it takes some guts to ask questions. A person who raises her hand and says, "I don't know what this is, but I'm willing to ask a question," is, you know, a good person. They're a smart person who's asking questions who wants to learn. So, questions move you forward.
In round four, that's when everyone kind of gets it. And you talk about, "Okay, there's some things we'll do in class, you know, some sort of Venn diagram or some way to describe or explain something." You go, "Okay, I get it." But not everyone gets it. So, round five is the most important thing, helping your partner. Remember, we're talking about teamwork right here. So, the students have to go through this process of realizing, "I got to get help from other people." Maybe you see the cow, but maybe your partner doesn't. And maybe the next time your partner will see the cow and you won't. So, your job is to help other people when you get something. It's your responsibility.