How Do I Love Thee: Play

Play emerges quite frequently within my topic of figurative language, especially this semester. It is easy to simply have students sit back at their desks and read, but at what point will students become bored and disengaged with the work? As a language arts teacher, I have found it is important to include times to “play” as a means to engage students in the material in ways that are not necessarily traditional. I agree that “When rule bound work does not yield the insights or results we want to achieve, when conventional thought, behavior, and disciplinary knowledge become barriers to our goals, play provides a fun and risk-free means of seeing from a fresh perspective, learning without constraint, exploring without fear” (Sparks of Genius, pg.268). Play has emerged through center work, art projects, and role playing activities in my classroom; but I think the most important place that “play” occurs is on field trips. When students are given the chance to learn in a unique environment outside of the classroom, the possibilities for play are endless.

To me, play is about having fun while seeing things in a new way and ultimately gaining knowledge from the experience. It allows for students who are not always able to learn the traditional way to internalize the information through a means that works best for them. For my introductory activity I chose to create a Google Drive presentation derived from the annual fifth grade overnight field trip my class took this week. Each year, students visit Hard Bargain Farm in Accokeek, Maryland. It is a wonderful place to get away and learn something new on the shoreline of the Potomac River. The naturalists at the farm teach specialized classes to the students depending on the season, weather conditions, and other key factors. Lessons taught correlate with science, social studies, and math.

This year on the trip I planned to take the learning a step further. I did this by involving my students in mini lessons throughout our time spent on the farm. These short lessons focused on figurative language. According to Jean Piaget this type of play can be categorized as “symbolic play” which “fosters tools such as analogizing, modeling, play-acting, and empathizing by invoking a make-believe world where one thing stands for another” (Sparks of Genius, pg. 249). Although the farm is a real place, the examples of figurative language that were identified and used ask students to think about life on the farm in a very different way. We “played” with words as we created examples of similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, onomatopoeia and hyperbole.

As an end result, I used photographs and discussions from the trip to create a presentation to share with my colleagues as well as students who were not able to attend the trip. My students this year are already well versed in figurative language, but this activity provided students with further reinforcement. In addition, I will be able to use this presentation as a way to introduce figurative language to students next year. New fifth grade students will also get a glimpse of what awaits them on the trip! This activity is meaningful because it allowed my class to play with words and phrases through exploration of life on the farm. I developed this activity as a way to share this amazing learning experience while relating it to figurative language on the farm. My work can be viewed by following the link below.

Playful Introduction to Figurative Language

How Do I Love Thee: Modeling & Dimensional Thinking

I had some difficulty determining which route I wanted to take for this activity. Since my content area is language arts, I first had to brainstorm what types of models are already in place within this area of focus. For me, teaching language arts is all about modeling the specific skills for students to master. I do this in several ways. For example, through the use of graphic organizers students are able to break down the texts in portions that are more manageable and easier to comprehend. For the purpose of this particular activity I wanted to devise a way for students to model one area of figurative language with hopes that the model could aid in their understanding of the selected topic. It is for this reason that I decided to focus on similes.

 According to Dictionary.com, a simile is "a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared". For example, "The girl is as busy as a bee". I began to think of how my students could  physically create models within this type of figurative language. I realized that by creating graphic representations of similes, students could experience the topic on a whole new level. Furthermore, I could easily use this activity as a model to teach the importance of similes in general. The benefits of this type of model include providing struggling students with a concrete representation, while allowing my students to be as creative as they pleased. 

To me as a teacher, modeling is creating a smaller more manageable representation of something that is normally on a much larger scale. Models can be abstract in nature, or very concrete. The dimension that I chose to explore similes through is a series of images in which my students would select and choose. I will now provide some insight as to what exactly it was that I had my students do. Students were provided with a selection of several different magazines filled with images. They were then instructed to create similes based on a topic of their choice. They were allowed to chose images from the magazines to serve as models for those similes that were created. Select samples of the graphical representations of the similes created can be found below. 

 

 

 

 

 

I chose an activity of this nature in order to ignite the imaginations of my students. Students are very accustomed to writing without creating anything visual to accompany their work. I try to integrate art whenever possible, but at times this is a near impossible task. Another positive for this activity was allowing students to cross a language barrier. Since many of my students speak English as a second language, this really helped to create meaning through the use of pictures. It allowed students to truly own their similes they had composed in class. As Sparks of Genius points out, Picasso said "To model is to possess it" (pg. 230). This activity allowed my students to take ownership of their written work while creating a whole new dimension of understanding.

How Do I Love Thee: Embodied Thinking

To me, embodied thinking means experiencing the world through your senses while also being able to experience the world through other individuals' perspectives as well.  This happens on a regular basis, with even the simplest everyday activities. The difference is that some people are more aware of this happening than others. It is important to take the time to practice the cognitive tool of embodied thinking because it allows for a different way in which we can observe the world. This leads to new insights and an increase in creativity.

 

I would group the majority of the students in my language arts class this year into the category of kinesthetic learners. These students are often labeled as overactive or hyper, but this is not necessarily true. These types of students simply learn in a different way. They really enjoy hands-on/minds-on lessons in which they can actually manipulate materials or even engage in role play. Sometimes it is difficult to always incorporate an element of activeness within my language arts lessons, but I sure do try. With this learning style in mind, I immediately thought of my class and how I could get them involved in embodied thinking. For this assignment, I wanted to try and engage my class in an activity to aid in the creation of my visual.

I chose to focus on a type of figurative language called onomatopoeia. According to Wikipedia, an Onomatopoeia is defined as "a word that imitates or suggests the source of the sound that it describes". For example, slap--slam--fizz--bop are all words that sound like their action. Their action? Yes, these words can be acted out (in a sense). This is where my students come in. This week I decided to teach mini lesson on figurative language and specifically included the use of onomatopoeia. After the mini lesson came the small group rotations which includes the independent work period, reinforcement with the teacher, and centers. Centers are areas where the students can engage in fun activities to practice the skills we are learning about in class. The "Mystery Center" is where I chose to have my students act out select onomatopoeia terms throughout the classroom. To document, I took photographs of my students in action. The results are below! 

Knock, Knock

 

Crunch!

 

Stomping Away

 

Drip, Drip, Drip

 

The Click of the Keyboard

 

As one can see, my students were enjoying themselves and really experiencing the learning. As part of my closing for the lesson I had a brief discussion on embodied thinking and how it related to what we did in class. I made sure to take the ideas down to a fifth grade level. I value student input and gauge overall success on class assignments as well as through the content of the discussions that stem from the lessons I teach. To me, the feedback from the kids is just as important as the input from my principal. Overall, the students really enjoyed the activity and wanted to do more. I will definitely be looking for a variety of new ways to engage students in embodied thinking throughout my language arts lessons this year.