Experiential Learning and why I fail.

Goal of the week: Standards based assessment is probably a good place to start.

Thought of the day: Experiential Learning and why I fail.

I'm always trying to find ways in my class to have the students learn by doing things. Not only does this keep them awake but it has them involved, invests them, nurtures creativity, and just plain develops real-world skills (sharing, group-work, time management) that will make them marketable in today's economy.

That, and it's better than listening to me drone on and on for hours on end. :-D

I did a lab on Friday that sucked. It was fun lab, but the peeps had trouble with the instructions so I redid them over the weekend and set aside time on Monday for us to finish the lab. No harm, no foul.

Except now I've got a bunch of mad kids because they thought they were done on Friday.

Such lines are surfacing as:
"What do you mean there's a second part to this..."
"I thought we were done already."
"This again..."
"You never said anything about a second half to this lab." (It was in the instructions I told them to read... so wow to that one because there were 3 parts and questions.)
"What do you mean there are THREE things to do! That's TOOO MUCH!"
"IOFJSIODJNFIOMS DIFJD:FJSL:DJFKL:S"
That last one came out more as a series of long and unintelligible groans.

Apparently, we need to work on how to do instruction in class to prevent this problem in the future. These kids don't read instructions worth anything. Goal 1 for labs - prevent whining. Goal 2 - prevent wasted time by getting work done quickly. Goal 3 - getting ALL work done. The end.