-
Explain, in your own words, what “processing activities” are and how they contribute to a coherent curriculum.
-
Processing activities allow the student to incorporate learned skills and ideas and apply them to scenarios to demonstrate content mastery. They are important because they allow the teacher to go back and reteach or fill the gaps in learning if needed.
-
I’ve read several responses about processing activities from other students. Very informative and helpful, because they were much simpler than what I had in mind.
I thought processing activities would involve an application of what was studied. For ex., making a model of the planets after the lesson. Perhaps that jumps too far forward in a sequence.
To center this around Biblical reflection on academics, then for example students could write about the scientific method of the age of geologic materials. How does this human-devised method of dating rocks fit in with God’s creation? I’m not a science expert and wondered this myself, and asked a public school teacher about it and she was able to explain the method so it made sense to me.
-
Processing activities are great for students to reflect upon what was taught in the lesson, how they feel about what was taught, how it relates to other things that they know or have read in Scripture, and how they can apply it. I like to do a lot of processing out loud, where others can contribute there opinions and thoughts about what we have covered. Though this method is helpful in generating the ideas and making connections for the students listening, not all students get to share typically. I really like the idea of writing reflections on 3 x 5 cards and then revisiting those cards halfway through the year to examine how thinking has changed and grown.
-
Processing activities encourage reflection and additional growth. Time passes, new facts were presented, conversations have taken place and students have had time to study more and to digest information. Additionally, students have matured in hopefully several areas. Do they feel the same way? Has a new perspective formed? What have they learned?
-
Processing activities are those tasks where students take time to reflect and think about what they have learned. For example, a teacher may ask students to reflect and write what stood out to them after reading a passage or story. After course discussion of the topic, students could be asked to re-read what they wrote and to write about any changes to their thinking.
