by Miranda Eisenstein, Old York Road – Beth Am
Today we learned how hands on learning can be beneficial to teaching children. With games, movement, and fidgets a student’s retention of the information can be longer and they can be excited about learning.
When we first came into the meeting, we met our guest speaker, and began speaking about why hands-on learning is important. As we have spoken about previously, different people have different learning styles. Each of these learning styles have different ways of teaching that they will respond best to. Each visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learner can respond well to hand on learning. The hands-on aspect gives many different components, and many different possibilities.
After proceeding to play a game involving the Hanukkah blessing. After rolling a dice, walking, and saying the prayers it became evident that this immersive way of learning was, for me, more enjoyable than the conventional methods – sitting in a classroom and reciting. After this we proceeded into a room with three stations, each to experience different types of hands- on learning. This allowed the TAP teens to experience the hand on learning and think of what each could be effective for.
Today was a very fun day of learning and very informative. I personally didn’t realize how many different kinds of hands-on learning there could be, as I had thought the only hands-on learning were games.