Sandra Dodd

To focus on learning and to recover from teaching (and related ideas), it helps to see long phrases and to turn them to simple, clear names. Small words. Plain nouns. Plain verbs.

Here's an example with a layer or two of educational jargon painted over something simple. A young boy is interested in business, and in a particular airline. Someone hoping to be helpful wrote:

-=-Though if you do want to incorporate integrated learning you could ... for instance Airline arithmetic (depending on his age and level) could involve cost pricing and comparing tickets from Point A to Point B (do this with a 3_D globe and you have geography in the picture as well:) ... language could include specific terms associated with each industry (airline / banking sector... etc.) ... -=-

There was more, but it wasn't coming nearer to simplicity.

If you (do) want to... incorporate integrated learning. Use (incorporate) together/combination (integrated) learning? It doesn't even simplify.

I think "3-D globe" is redundant. If it's not "globular," it's a map.

"Language could include specific terms associated with..."
I think that meant "you could create a vocabulary lesson with jargon."

If the mom continues to answer her child's questions and point out casual tie-ins as they come along, she will be helping him learn more about what he's interested in. He will learn terminology gradually and naturally as they discuss how airlines operate over weeks, months, years, or until something else takes his interest and he's not asking about the airline anymore.

A globe doesn't clarify why some flights are more expensive than others. A population map might. But there are large cities whose airfares are higher for reasons that aren't easy to guess outside the industry (and might not make much sense inside, and young boys might not be able to even consider the factors even if moms could figure them out).

Just as an aside/connection, the globe at our house appeared in Just Add Light and Stir recently:

http://justaddlightandstir.blogspot.com/2011/07/be-where-your-child-is.html

It might be a good quote for this idea of words on words to describe lessons and strategies for the incorporation of integrated learning.

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Be where your child is.
For unschooling to work, parents need to stop looking into the future and live more in the moment with their real child. BEING with a child is being where the child is, emotionally and spiritually and physically and musically and artistically. Seeing where the child *is* rather than seeing a thousand or even a dozen places she is not.
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Sandra

Deb Lewis

***Though if you do want to incorporate integrated learning you could ... for instance Airline arithmetic (depending on his age and level) could involve cost pricing and comparing tickets from Point A to Point B (do this with a 3_D globe and you have geography in the picture as well:) ... language could include specific terms associated with each industry (airline / banking sector... etc.) ... ***

If you hit the kid with a stick every time he said, "airline," you probably couldn't squelch his interest faster. And the stick might be kinder.

In less time than it might take someone to "incorporate integrated learning" you could drive your kid to the airport and watch the planes come and go, have lunch in the cafeteria, listen to the sounds.

Math: pricing airline tickets. Geography: looking at maps, finding airports. Language: making a list of airline words,etc.
From sixty five words to seventeen!

But once the word problem <g> is solved the idea is still terrible. Go watch planes, instead. Talk about planes, plan a trip and fly if you can, watch Snakes on a Plane: a froth of words indeed!

Deb Lewis






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