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Showing posts with label biographies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label biographies. Show all posts

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning, Team Building, and Collaboration

Here's a fun way for students to share information, while enjoying a shared experience and bonding as a class! 

It's called "Party Talk!"

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together

I learned about this activity when I was working on my Master's program in Creative Arts in Learning. This particular class was a music class. Our assignment was to research a composer. 

I don't want to give away my age but this music assignment was when the internet was virtually unknown, and at the time, it was hard to find information about a composer that was still alive... at the time. We were given the assignment to learn about the composer, but we didn't know what we were going to do with that information until we came to class that day.

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together
Since I was working on a production of Company at the time, I chose to research Stephen Sondheim. (Yes, musical theatre is my thing. I played the part of April in this production!) 

 This isn't my production, but this "butterfly monologue" was one of my favorite scenes I've ever performed.

 Again, this isn't me, but I did sing this song in the production. (You may recognize the man playing Bobby!)

We showed up the day the research was due, and had no idea what to expect! The instructor told us we were going to have a "cocktail party" and gave us "Hello My Name is..." tags.

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together

Well, we put the names of our composers on our tags and started chatting with others at the "cocktail party."  I chatted with Beethoven, Vivialdi, Tchaikovsky, Handel, Mozart, and several others. What a great way to share the information we learned!

Fast forward many years... although most of my teaching has been in the primary grades, I did spend a couple of years in fifth grade. (Luckily I had some awesome colleagues to help me!) While teaching the Revolutionary War, we were due for a research project, and I remembered this activity. 

So we had a "Boston Tea Party." (I did make it clear we were going to drink tea rather than throw it in the harbor.) A parent volunteer made some awesome colonial themed nametags, we pulled of the "fine china" and they had tea (with plenty of sugar) while chatting with other colonial heroes. They used "cheat sheets, of course, and I gave them typical questions to ask each other. We modeled a few rounds on the days leading up to the event so they'd know what to expect. I had extra adults in the room that day to make sure they stayed on task and interacted with lots of classmates, not just their closest buddies. (Yes, children need a lot more guidance than adults, don't they?)

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together

With adults, it's ok to call it a "cocktail party," but with the little ones, I prefer to call it "party talk." 

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together

 Can you imagine your own precious little ones doing this?

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together

As you know, children love to get dressed up and pretend to be someone (or something) else! Why not put that excitement into learning? Pretty much anything that can be researched can be presented in this way: biographies, careers, landforms, or even life cycles!

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together
 

They really do enjoy dressing up and pretending to be someone else... it's like getting a second Halloween! (without the candy, of course!)

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together
This is one of those activities that they'll always remember! Years from now, they'll remember which classmates were which characters. The brain remembers things like that... the brain is social, and tends to remember when emotions are strong. And yes, emotions run strong with a fun project like this!

 

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together

If you study Life Cycles, these are great for beginning researchers: The Life Cycle Collection

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together

If you think about it, you can do party talk at just about any time! They could even have their own name on their nametags, and just talk about themselves! (Great beginning of the year activity!)

Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together

How can you use the "Party Talk" activity in your classroom?
Party Talk, an Activity for Sharing Learning: This fun activity will help your students share research in a fun way while bonding and working together



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