How Nonsense Can Be a Learning Experience

[HowToBe]

I wasn't sure where to put this, or whether it might fit on SOTT (in Lighten Up, maybe), but it struck me as a funny and cool way to teach kids grammar.

http://www.brighthubeducation.com/parenting-grade-schoolers/128834-nonsense-as-a-learning-experience/

Children will look forward to learning when you make it a game. Discover a way to teach grammar to young kids with a fun activity they will want to "play" again and again.

“Have you ever seen a mango eating a peach?” my son asked me as I was driving him to preschool.

“No,” I replied. “I've never seen a mango eating a peach, but it would probably be delicious.”

“Have you ever seen a... um... pear riding a tree?”

Kids say the craziest things. Teachers and parents sometimes just have to play along with the nonsense. As my son's wordplay continued, block after block, I was thinking it was just some chatter I had to tolerate while hanging out with a five-year-old.

Then it hit me: he was building sentences.
Turning a Game into a Lesson

My son is growing up bilingual and is an early reader, so I'm rarely surprised by what he says or how he thinks. But on that day, I could almost see the sentences being diagramed. Without thinking about it, he was changing the subject, object and verb. He was adjusting prepositions and pronouns when needed. He had created his own grammar exercise and was giggling about it.

I decided I had better harness this.

“Have you ever seen a fish flying a plane?”

“No,” I replied. “But I've seen a pilot flying a plane.”

I countered every bit of craziness with a sentence that made more sense. When he actually asked me a question that was possible and logical, I replied with a nonsensical combination of nouns and verbs. I received laughter in return.

“Have you ever seen a monkey eating a banana?”

“Yes, but I've never seen a monkey fishing with a banana.”

The rest of the article suggests ideas for applying this idea in a classroom setting.

I like that idea of responding to the nonsense sentences with sentences that explain something about the world. I'm not sure about the final exercise idea, though:

Somehow, It Makes Sense

Now it is time to stretch your students' imaginations. Even the most far-out statement can be logical under the right circumstances.

Fill one hat with nouns and another with verbs. Have each student draw two nouns and one verb. Have them build an illogical sentence then find some way for it all to make sense.

“Have you ever seen a bear washing a flea?”

“Yes. Giant space fleas had just invaded the planet. When they arrived on Earth, they were covered with asteroid dust and comet goo. The bear decided he'd better be nice to the invaders, so he gave the giant space flea a bath.”

 

[societe humaine]

That's fantastic htb,

We're starting homeschooling at the end of March. We really have no fixed idea how to go about it. Snippets like this encourage me to think that is not such a bad way to approach learning, not knowing what you are doing.

All I know for sure is that as an animal, we learn better from teaching ourselves, rather than being taught; copying, I wouldn't consider being taught.

After that, our children will have to face the harsh reality, that they are going to have to try to thrive in the world we are leaving them, so skill sets are needed, which we are and have been, trying to ascertain.

I'd love to know if there are some here, doing the same thing.

Jeff

 

[DougEE]

In my other life as a teacher of Mathematics (I'm retired now), I would periodically do a similar exercises in some of my classes. The concept was to get the brain out of ruts and to encourage out-of-the-box thinking. Problem solving skills rely heavily on this type of thinking to promote creativity, but it seems that the authorities are not so much interested in creativity anymore. There used to be courses in Critical Thinking Skills offered in Universities in Canada back in the 1960 to 1980 time frame, but these have mostly disappeared.

However, there are websites trying to carry on these ideas, for example http://www.increasebrainpower.com/

Getting back to an exercise that I found useful and enjoyable was to challenge the student to write (remember what that is??) mathematical solutions using their opposite hand. The left-handed writers would now write with their right hand, and vice versa. They always started out being very scratchy, but even after 30 minutes of writing, most everyone improved significantly.

So keep up the nonsense, keep it fun and everyone grows with it.

 

[seek10]

I have seen kids talking nonsense and doing out of control laughing. Looking them as 'sentence formation' is interesting. In the process, they have a emotional tuning that builds bonds and happy chemicals.

 

[Renaissance]

I think this also touches on how important play is to learning. Children who have been exposed to trauma have much more difficulty with play, but there's also treatments that specifically seek to use play to help treat trauma. And from what I understand, there can be an environment and tools set to encouraging play, but when it becomes directed, it's not really play anymore.

That said I'm cautious about that last exercise as well. It sounds like it is moving toward the dumbing down exercises that are prevalent in the new 'common core' standards' in the US. Teachers have a role to show their students what makes sense and they shouldn't be making things more confusing by blurring the lines. The parent in the article seemed to understand this. She played the game while also showing what made sense and what didn't.

 

[HowToBe]

That said I'm cautious about that last exercise as well. It sounds like it is moving toward the dumbing down exercises that are prevalent in the new 'common core' standards' in the US. Teachers have a role to show their students what makes sense and they shouldn't be making things more confusing by blurring the lines. The parent in the article seemed to understand this. She played the game while also showing what made sense and what didn't.

They seemed to, yet she came up with that last exercise, too. The other exercises seem to step in the direction of objectivity, while encouraging the mind to explore freely. The final exercise seems to encourage subjectivity. Doesn't it resemble the process of justifying a lie, or rationalizing conflicts away, just in a "cartoon" form?

Maybe it could be turned towards truth, though. "When the bear swims in the river to wash himself, his fleas get wet too!" :) Or, to take a different approach: "The bear washes fleas off himself in the river." The children could have three or so words like this, and the task is to work together to make a sentence using all of the words pulled from a hat. That way it's clear that it's just a sentence, and weird ideas about what is "logical" or not aren't being encouraged.

 

[echpt]

What a wonderful way to learn. If we could find a way to incorporate this teaching technique in the public school systems..

 

[H-KQGE]

What a wonderful way to learn. If we could find a way to incorporate this teaching technique in the public school systems..

No chance. If you're a teacher in public schools you follow the strict dictates of the current curriculum. If anyone gets wind of you veering off into "creative tangents", which can sometimes involve other teachers reporting you, (personal grievance, authoritarian follower, or other) then you either get a thorough dressing down (multiple ways of this not just verbal remonstration either way) or "moved on." That's education.