Family Free Day at UC Irvine's Beall Center THIS SATURDAY!

Claire Trevor School of the Arts
Beall Center for Art + Technology Presents
Family Day -- Saturday, November 5, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Children and families of all ages are invited to enjoy free, hands-on 
art and science activities at UC Irvine's Beall Center Family Day.  
The event offers a kid-friendly introduction to new media art 
relating to the Beall Center's current exhibit, eyecode: 
Interactive works by Artist Golan Levin.

The Beall Center Family Day includes interesting art projects, and 
amazing hands-on demonstration by local high-tech companies in 
manufacturing, engineering, and design.  The Optics Institute of 
Southern California will present their Artricks-Optricks program, 
demonstrating the principles of light, vision, and other 
optical phenomena in a fun and engaging way; Irvine's Mathobotix 
will demonstrate how they use robotics to excite generations of 
children to study science and technology; the OC Maker Faire reps will 
be helping launch paper rockets, and additional art + technology 
projects will be presented.  

Light complimentary refreshments will be provided, and the Komodo Food 
Truck will be on sight offering delicious gourmet meals from $3 to $8.

The Beall Center for Art + Technology is located at the Claire Trevor 
School of the Arts, UCI campus, Building 712 Arts Plaza.  Admission is 
free and open to the public.  Parking at UC Irvine is $10. (Map: 
www.uci.edu/campusmap). For information about the Beall Center, go to 
www.beallcenter.uci.edu, or call (949)824-6206.

Roger

OWRJA#3

Please read the article, Learning is Messy (http://turklishtefl.com/2011/10/30/learning-is-messy/) and my response to the article here (http://tefl.posterous.com/rhythms-not-chaos) . What is your opinion? Please make a comment on the 'comment' section of my post here: http://tefl.posterous.com/rhythms-not-chaos . If you have trouble, you can just send an email with your response to me. Remember, the quiz will be on chapter 7 only and there will be a quiz on chapter 8 the following week.

Roger

Rhythms, Not Chaos

This piece (http://turklishtefl.com/2011/10/30/learning-is-messy/) by Nick Jaworski seems to justify his loud classroom as an ideal model for learning. He writes: 

> My classrooms rarely fit this vision because I think learning is loud. Learning is messy. I try my best to make learners interested in my lessons. They don’t sit quietly because they aren’t going to get a sticker, they’ll be put in time out, or I’ll yell at them. In fact, they generally don’t sit quietly at all.

I am not calling out his intentions-they seem noble. But he makes his point by creating a false opposition. He seems to assert "sitting quietly" equals non-learning and 'yelling out of turn' equals bad learning.

I think neither is. These are two extremes that need to be tempered.

There's a time and place for both in the ELT classroom. Sometimes students -even five-year-olds- need quietness and stillness in order to learn. Conversely, sometimes they need the teacher's blessing and encouragement to do the opposite. Learning does occur if there's stillness. Unfortunately, this article superimposes a simplistic juxtaposition:

> What’s your vision of the ideal classroom? Is it a classroom where every learner sits calmly and quietly? Do students always raise their hands before talking? Are they always focused on their task?

> In my experience, this is what’s passed down to us as the ideal class. But whose ideal class is it? The teacher’s of course. The teacher is the one who wants all tstudents sitting quietly and listening only to them. They don’t want the chaos of 20 students all talking at once. Every student should be focused on their task whether they find it interesting or not.

The trap for teachers of young learners is that they often go to one of these two extremes. It is a sign of inexperience or lack of attention to their own tendencies. The key is having rhythms. Establishing appropriate rhythms in classes fosters a child's awareness and appreciation of the safe times for both freedom of expression and quiet times. Learning occurs in both!

It's really hard having both. Yet both is desired. Staying committed to these rhythms is tough but should not be abandoned. Young children don't transition well between the two unless there's an established rhythm in the classroom. An example of a rhythm might be after lunch, there's a time of quiet reading or drawing or thinking. There might be a time when kids can 'let fly' and be as free as they want-all with the teacher's blessing and fervent encouragement. Once these kids are used to these rhythms, they learn discipline and reap the benefits of structure. No kid learns well in chaos. Having structure and established rhythms provides a safe environment for learning to occur.

Roger


Roger