Tag Archive for 'insegnanti.'

Teaching critical and divergent thinking

Teaching critical and creative thinking to today’s youth is a complex challenge influenced by various social, cultural, and technological factors. These difficulties include:

  1. Information Overload - The current generation is exposed to a constant stream of information from digital technologies and social media, the quality of which is difficult to verify. This information overload can hinder young people’s ability to discern and critically evaluate information sources.
  2. Technological Dependency - The increasing dependence on digital devices and social media can undermine the concentration and mental disposition required for critical and creative thinking due to constant digital distractions and stimuli.
  3. Culture of Instant Gratification - Contemporary society promotes the expectation of immediate results and instant gratification, discouraging the patience and depth of analysis required for critical thinking and solving complex problems.
  4. Academic Pressure - Young people may face significant pressure to achieve outstanding academic results, leading to a focus on memorizing information rather than developing critical thinking skills. Others may lack academic pressure because they believe that web-based research is sufficient for acquiring any knowledge.
  5. Cultural Changes - Contemporary culture may favor conformity and uniformity of opinions, with less tolerance for diversity of thought and individuality. Influencers often become the primary cultural and interpersonal relationship references.
  6. Fear of Failure - Reluctance to embrace failure can discourage young people from taking risks and experimenting with new ideas, even though failure is often an essential component of the critical thinking and learning process. This mindset undermines the acceptance of errors as a fundamental part of learning.
  7. Limitations in the Learning Environment - Educators may face challenges in teaching critical thinking due to time constraints, pressure to follow the curriculum, and limited resources. They can also be affected by these cultural changes.
  8. Information Distortion - In the age of fake news and online misinformation, young people may struggle to distinguish between accurate and misleading information. This makes the acquisition of critical analysis skills for evaluating sources and verifying information crucial.
  9. Abundance of Digital Entertainment - Constant access to digital entertainment and games can compete with time dedicated to reflection and critical reading. The ubiquitous presence of entertainment devices can discourage intellectual depth, as digital entertainment often presents learning as a game that is abandoned if not enjoyable.
  10. Online Social Interaction - Frequent use of social media and messaging platforms can promote superficial and rapid communication at the expense of meaningful conversations and critical reflection. This can limit opportunities for in-depth idea exchange. In sports, only the most significant moments of performances are watched, while the rest is considered boring.

Encouraging critical and creative thinking among young people requires a collaborative effort by educators, parents, and society as a whole. This may include adopting educational approaches that prioritize critical thinking, promoting mindful technology use, and offering experiential learning opportunities that enable young people to apply critical thinking in real-world contexts.

10 reasons to increase the young physical activity

Let’s remember why exercise is essential for the young development.

  1. It improves the cardiovascular system, so aerobic activity and its ability to circulate blood and oxygen has been used to explain improvements in brain function and cognition (increased capillary growth).
  2. Increased neural network due to greater diffusion of neurotransmitters.
  3. Growth of new neurons in areas of the hippocampus that promote learning and memory.
  4. In young people the greater the demands of school performance, the greater the need for breaks.
  5. Free, unstructured play reduces cognitive interference, promoting learning. More evident in children than in adolescents and adults (cognitive immaturity hypothesis).
  6. Affective relationships and collaboration with peers support learning and inhibit antisocial behavior.
  7. Gradual development of “executive skills” (response inhibition, memory, and decision-making flexibility).
  8. The amount of time children are involved in motor activity and sports is proportional to their school performance; the more time the greater the educational benefits for children and adolescents.
  9. An important consideration for school administrators is the impact of motor activity programs on academic achievement. Schools with more minutes of physical activity have higher levels of academic achievement.
  10. A program called “system-fit” that integrates age-appropriate physical activity is an opportunity to help children who can be defined as kinesthetic-student and children who do not adjust well to the school environment.

 

Basket-Mathematics school program

New study with 756 first through fifth graders demonstrates that a six-week mashup of hoops and math has a positive effect on their desire to learn more, provides them with an experience of increased self-determination and grows math confidence among youth. The Basketball Mathematics study was conducted at five Danish primary and elementary schools by researchers from the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports.

 

In recent decades, there has been a considerable amount of attention paid to explore different approaches to stimulate children’s learning. Especially, there has been a focus on how physical activity, separated from the learning activities, can improve children’s cognitive performance and learning. Conversely, there has been less of a focus aimed at the potential of integrating physical activity into the learning activities. The main purpose of this study therefore was to develop a learning activity that integrates  and mathematics and examine how it might affect children’s motivation in mathematics.

Increased motivation, self-determination and mastery

Seven-hundred fifty-six children from 40 different classes at Copenhagen area schools participated in the project, where about half of the them—once a week for six weeks—had Basketball Mathematics during gym class, while the other half played basketball without mathematics.

“During classes with Basketball Mathematics, the children had to collect numbers and perform calculations associated with various basketball exercises. An example could be counting how many times they could sink a basket from three meters away vs. at a one-meter distance, and subsequently adding up the numbers. Both the math and basketball elements could be adjusted to suit the children’s levels, as well as adjusting for whether it was addition, multiplication or some other function that needed to be practiced,” explains Linn Damsgaard, who is writing her Ph.D. thesis on the connection between learning and physical activity at the University of Copenhagen’s Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports.

The results demonstrate that children’s motivation for math integrated with basketball is 16% higher com-pared to classroom math learning. Children also experienced a 14% increase in self-determination compared with classroom teaching, while Basketball Mathematics increases mastery by 6% compared versus classroom-based mathematics instruction. Furthermore, the study shows that Basketball Mathematics can maintain children’s motivation for mathematics over a six-week period, while the motivation of the control group decreases significantly.

“It is widely acknowledged that youth motivation for schoolwork decreases as the  year progresses. Therefore, it is quite interesting that we don’t see any decrease in motivation when kids take part in Basketball Mathematics. While we can’t explain our results with certainty, it could be that Basketball Mathematics endows children with a sense of ownership of their calculations and helps them clarify and concretize abstract concepts, which in turn increases their  to learn mathematics through Basketball Mathematics,” says Ph.D. student Linn Damsgaard

Active math on the school schedule

Associate Professor Jacob Wienecke of UCPH’s Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, who supervised the study, says that other studies have proved the benefits of movement and physical activity on children’s academic learning. He expects for the results of Basketball Mathematics on  and academic performance to be published soon:

“We are currently investigating whether the Basketball Mathematics model can strengthen youth performance in . Once we have the final results, we hope that they will inspire school teachers and principals to prioritize more  and movement in these subjects,” says Jacob Wienecke, who concludes:

“Eventually, we hope to succeed in having these tools built into the school system and the teacher’s education. The aim is that schools in the future will include “Active English” and “Active Mathematics” in the weekly schedule as subjects where physical education and subject-learning instructors collaborate to integrate this type of instruction with the normally more sedentary classwork.”

(Source: phys.org)

Does it exist in Italy a diffuse sport culture?

Is it possible that one Country with the highest rate of overweight and obese children in Europe, and with a high percentage of sedentary adults be considered a Country with widespread sports culture, defined and shared?

Could it be that it is precisely the model of the sedentary parent to determine the overweight children?

Could it be that it is the absence of physical activity in kindergartens and primary schools to determine the belief that sport and movement are something of peripheral in the well-being of a young development?

Could it be to bring the children to play outdoors is regarded as exhausting ,while it is easier to let them to watch cartoons or to play with the play station?

Could it be to assess the degree in sport science and Prof of physical education as graduates and teachers of lesser value than the other school colleagues, does not serve to continue to depreciate the value of human development through movement?

Could it be that to consider sport as a leisure activity and not as an activity that also permit to improve academic performance leads to its chronic underestimation by the school and parents?

Could it be that if the parents does not share the sport with their children and friends is a way to not get them to play outdoors?

Soccer school for children with intellectual disabilities

The project Calcio Insieme, promoted by Roma Cares Foundation in collaboration with the sport association Accademia di Calcio Integrato, has the aim to promote the motor and the football teaching in young people between 6 and 12 years with intellectual disabilities in order to improve the  quality of their lives through the ongoing practice of sport, to teach a model of football adequate for them and to build a community in which school, families, sports organization and staff can be feel part of a common project centered on children with intellectual disabilities. The purpose of the project is to create the conditions to promote the empowerment of everyone regardless of their starting skills, as it has been defined by the nternational Paralympic Committee.
Currently participating in the program 30 children, including 3 girls, 10 football  instructors, 4 sports psychologists, 1 speech therapist, 1 sport physician, in addition to: technical director, responsible for relations with schools and families, scientific director, journalist , project manager and administration. At the end of this first year we will be published the results achieved regarding the motor aspects, football learning and psychosocial children.

3 things students want to hear

Collegamento permanente dell'immagine integrata

3 easy thing but too often not said!

 

Winter will start: keep children active indoors

Child care providers often dread those days when the weather is bad and the children can’t get outdoors to play. But children need to have active times every day to use up energy, learn new things, and be healthy. Luckily, active play can happen indoors as well as outdoors. With a little imagination and creativity, child care providers can come up with activities that use large muscles and burn energy, but can be done indoors. Here are some ideas to try:

  • Put on some music and have a dance party. Move back the furniture if you need to make more room to dance.Let children suggest their favorite songs.
  • Give children a scarf, ribbon or some paper streamers to wave in time to music. Encourage them to find as many different ways to move the scarf or ribbon as they can.
  • Encourage children to dress up as a favorite character from a book and act out the story
  • Plan a “work out” time to do simple exercises with children. Keep them age-appropriate. Exercises can be done to music, or you can borrow simple exercise tapes from the public library
  • Play circle games such as Simon Says, Follow the Leader, or Duck, Duck Goose to keep children active
  • Have children pretend to ice skate wearing socks on a smooth floor
  • Children love pretending to be animals by making their sounds and movements.
  • Set up an indoor basketball game with crumpled up newspaper balls thrown into a laundry basket or cardboard box
  • Pile up old blankets and pillows for soft indoor climbing fun

Active play is an essential part of young children’s lives. Effective child care programs give children ways to be active indoors as well as outside. With imagination and creativity, you can come up with other fun ideas for active play.

(Some ideas from eXtension.org)

The young have to learning how to learn

This is the thought of Ignazio Visco, Governor of the Bank of Italy concerning the role of the knowledge:

“The challenge we face is not only to provide younger energies to our teachers but especially as to attribute to the many teachers who daily have to cope with limitations and difficulties imposed by tradition, school programs, budgetary constraints, new goals: that is to say, to teach their students “learning how to learn”, to convince them of the importance of ongoing training throughout their lives, working or not, to become permanent researchers, regardless of their occupation contingent “(from Investing in Knowledge, 2014, p. 141).

This is one of the main actions to be put in place to cope with the challenges of the new century.

Pygmalion Effect: the bias damage & trust benefits

A lot of coaches have children a little bit slower to learn than the others, perhaps less dynamics and less coordinated. How they are treated by the coach and teammates? He is given them the same opportunities of the others?
In psychology  have been carried out studies on what it’s called the “Pygmalion Effect” resulting from the reserches about the self-fulfilling prophecy. The underlying assumption of these studies is easily applicable to the field of sport learning: if the coach believes that a child is not able as the others, even unknowingly, he may be will coach him differently from the others; the child internalize the judgment and act accordingly; consequently establishing a vicious circle in which the child will tend over time to become just like her coach had imagined. In practical terms, we can say that often the lack of confidence in the ability of the children learning blocks the learning itself and pushes the children to satisfy their coach getting exactly what she expects, the prophecy comes true.

We can imagine the kind of result that this coach attitude may have on the children development.
Children motor development, but also their psychological development is constantly changing and a moment of stasis may be followed by others of fast change. The Pygmalion Effect when linked to a negative judgment binds the children progresses to the judgment of their teachers. This behavior is attributed to the fact that the children act the behavior elicited by the adult expectations: therefore low expectations solicitate low learning results.

If you accept the notion that acoach will face a clear idea of the athletes according to this pre-judgment, it’s easy to understand the relevance of the prophecies and positive expectations about the success of the children within their learning process. Coaches having positive expectations of their students can, in turn, create a  warmer socio-emotional climate around them, provide more feedback about the quality of their sessions, they seem to give more information and expect better results in addition to giving more opportunities for questions and answers. According to the Rosenthal’s observations, the teachers who believe they have good students in front of them smile more often, they make approval movements with the head, stopping over them looking longer in the eyes, they speak with a positive body language. They are more likely to praise and correct errors without taking a critical stance. “In essence, a professor who believes he has to do with gifted students teaches more and better” (Rosenthal, 1976).

Understanding the Pygmalion Effect in its negative and positive aspects allows us to understand the importance of the dynamic effect of trust in the development of the children full potential. Trust is a very important part in our lives, it’s a means by which we can enrich our lives and the lives of others. The lack of confidence, to the contrary, produces frustration and paralysis.

Trust is able to open up a world of endless possibilities.

(by Daniela Sepio)

Review book: The movement for the children

Attività Motoria-Cognitiva nella Scuola Primaria

Carmelo Pittera

2014, p. 127

Euro Centro Studi “Gabbiano d’Argento”

I knew Carmelo Pittera more than 30 years ago, I was very young and he had already reached the 2° place in the Volley World Champioship as a coach of the Italian team. In the following years we became experts in the children movement working on his insight. Carmelo has continued to work in this direction and he is published a new program for children called SELL. In these years he started to apply this model in the North of Italy (Gorizia), in Slovenia and in Argentina.  I believe that it’s a new approach well based from the theoratical side, it’s innovative and every teacher in school can easily use. I will come back on this project in the next future but for the moment I want to introduce to you, helping you share my same enthusiasm.

What it follow is the presentation by Carmelo Pittera.

My interest toward Minivolley begins at the end of the ’70, when I met the person that we can define as the inventor of Minivolley, Professor Horst Baacke, who introduced in Eastern Germany an early form of volleyball for groups of children aged ten to twelve years.

From a cultural and educational perspective, I was skeptical about the various aspects of early specialization in sports games, mainly because of the definition of Minisport. I was convinced, however, that in children from eight to ten yearsold , the physical education should be considered an asset to the service of the integral development of the children It is really important that the education at the movement help them to a global growth.
Thus it was born the first draft of “Motor Sillabarius”, which represented  the starting point of the SELL system (Signal, Reading, Execution, Lateralization). At the Motor Syllabarius was followed by the publication of “The alphabet of movement,” which picked up the results obtained in research on  ”analogic- expressive phase” of the movement education. Published in four volumes, the pedagogical section was written by experts in primary education and psychologists.

The SELL is an educational system that has the purpose of teaching, structuring and implementation of neural circuits that affect, starting from the motor area, the cognitive dimensio. It develops in children, not only the opportunity to interact with others (socialization), but also the chance to do better things with others (cooperation). It can be defined as:

  • Intuitive activitiy , induced by  the Observer, through four mediators: activities (direct experience), iconic (drawings), analogical (dramatization) and symbolic (colors and numbers and more, to represent the variables and their relationships);
  • A path through which the Observer builds learning environments in which the children are brought to question rather than waiting canned responses.
  • A uniform language, the same for all, which does not require specific words, easily accessible as it adapted to the children’s cognitive and motor potential.

SELL (Signal, Reading, Execution, Lateralization) is structured in four parts:

The Expressive Analogical System  is a theoretical-practical path for the activation of the circuits of motor learning and cognitive development from children of 4 years old. It’s composed of various educational track  by using the environmental opportunities or the body combined with the wall and the ground, or building games with figures and symbols with a stick combining them with their own body and that of the teammates; or analogies with the animal world, combined with natural colors and their body; or games with simple teaching material (balloons, cards and so on).

The optical and acoustic Symbolic Analogical System for the improvement of basic motor patterns from 8 to 12 yearsold : run, jump, throw, catch. The actions are related to the lateralization and performance oculus-manual and oculus-breech, equilibrium, systems of  acceleration and deceleration of the gravity center as well as the distinct body segments. All this is achieved through symbols, simple elements and specific groups are created in a special way by the system SELL.

The lateralization System, with and without the group. This system was created to facilitate the harmonious development of the growing child’s motor and performance relating to “degrees of freedom”, with particular attention to the problems of the non-dominant body side.
The support system in the development of analogical Expressive, analogical optical and acoustic Symbolic of paper materials and computer equipment to facilitate the learning in the classroom and at home.

The materials consist of:

  • The light and the puppet play.
  • The directional eyes, hypothetical or actually represented on the shirt or on the tip of the shoes.
  • The mental visualization: the mind’s eye.
  • The activity oculus – manual / breech developed with the use of conventional elements (balls, rubber bands and so on) or non-conventional (newspapers, empty bottles and other).

The game of lights and puppets, directional eyes  and mental visualization must be known and internalized by children before beginning the teaching units. Traffic lights and the “game of the puppet.”

During our on field lessons, we have verified that the imitation of children is often inaccurate. With researchers of SELL System  we have tried to solve this problem, looking for solutions suited to the children characteristics.
After several attempts, we arrived at the “Game of the traffic lights.” The choice of this symbol was adopted after being tested that all knew it. We have identified the symbol of traffic lights along with the image of ‘”Vitruvian Man” by Leonardo da Vinci, that we modify using the three light colors, with the aim of relating the different parts of the human body with these colors.
The symbols used, in addition to increasing the attentional focus, has a considerable influence in the development of imagination and, consequently, in the creativity of forms. It allows children to improve the knowledge of the structure of their body, and the teacher, together with the children, to develop new kind of play, improving the stabilization of teaching content.