Experiential Education-Abigail Christensen (Post 1)

(image from http://www.ut.edu/experiential/)

Last semester while I was taking Grinell's class we read an article that talked about how we have intuition as teachers that we constantly act on.  One piece of teacher intuition that I want to explore further is the impact of using the techniques of experiential education (usually a term used to describe outdoor education) within the classroom.  I tried to channel anything from real life and incorporate it into my classroom.  This required a large amount of simulation; for example, when my students went through the same experiences as the characters in a novel by doing a pretend witch trial or creating a pretend "Giver" society.  Within these experiences students' comprehension and engagement appeared to go way, way up.  This idea is a really loosely based observation that isn't backed in any research.  I want to use this opportunity to further explore the explicit strategies that I can use and observe what impacts they have in my classroom.

After completing my literature review last semester I already feel like I've opened up a whole new arena of teaching that rings true to my intuition that I've been operating from and gives it more direction and guidelines.    I know that I really need to narrow down my focus and I want to take it in a more literacy based direction.  Specifically I'm considering looking at the impact of role play with fiction and comprehension.  I'm definitely not set on something specific, but I'm trying to narrow my focus because at the moment just "experiential education" is really broad.