ORIGAMI IS A 'LEARNING TO LEARN' STRATEGY
Being an activity that links different
subjects of the curriculum, origami provides continuity between the
learning processes extabilished in learning English and the rest of
the areas.
Origami besides originates behaviours and strategies that reinforce
the intellectual development.
|
Learning to...
|
Think about the world
Fold
Listen
Collaborate
Memorize
Spatialize
Create
Respect rules
Discover another culture |
This tecnique can be exploited to support skills helpful
to several subjects in the curriculum.
Observing
Identifying
Deducing
Matching
Sequencing
Analysing |
SKILLS |
Comparing
Describing
Grouping
Ordering
Remembering
Conceptualizing
|
Origami builds up children's confidence
providing experiences such as guessing the meaning of the subsequent
steps, hypothesizing, attemping to make the right folding, discussing
a symbolic clue and so on. Teaching methods should therefore rely on
the big variety of learning strategies spread among the children and
stimulate all the perceptive channels, without concentrating exclusively
on visual memory.
Origami is a multiskill medium because it requires and stimulates different
communicative channels:
-Visual: learners need to rely
on pictorial information to provide a conbgproperties="fixed" TEXT to
work out the meanings from context folding paper into origami also tends
to refine a certain degree of reading images skills, spatial consciousness
and hand-eye coordination;
-Kinestetic: each movement is a step of the creation, has its
own meaning and its own purpose, has to be intended and carefully performed;
-Audial: we work on this medium using FL while folding and describing
orally the following steps.
Origami gives a positive impulse to
the interactive language exchanges because children participate not
only at a cognitive level, but also at a multi-sensoric and emotive
one. Another relevant strategy that origami is able to develop is work
organizing: the art of origami itself is made of consecutive steps and
requires a scheme of things that comes from the necessarily step-by-step
procedure.
Obviously, when the children have created a new origami, it is a source
of pleasure and pride. So it is a special moment of the learning path
when we put origami creations on an apposite display, either in the
classroom or around the school: other classes come into contact with
English too.
Origami helps children to reflect on their learning processes because
it involves problem solving, hypothesizing, self questioning, self assessment
and a degree of self-correction.
METACOGNITION AND ORIGAMI
As well as developing language skills
in a fun environment, the activities described in this work about using
origami paper folding furthermore help with the child's cognitive development
by improving manipulative skills, concentration, patience, and use of
imagination.
As a fundamental tool building progressive cross-curricular links between
the specific Foreign Language syllabus and the wider aims of the totality
of the learning areas of the primary school in Italy, we must consider,
in the end, that origami encourages active learning processes and helps
children to exercise higher order thinking processes:
-REFLECTIVE THINKING: while folding paper into origami children have
time to review what they have done, to evaluate their movements and
to draw out new shapes and creative products.
-INDIVIDUAL RESPONSABILITY: children can choose their own "codes" to
convey instructions; it is all up to them, but orgami teaches them that
without respecting certain rules their work will be useless because
not perfect and, therefore, unpleasant.
-COOPERATIVE LEARNING: peer tutoring or learning in a group how to create
an origami can extend opportunities to understand and encourage the
less able, to compare with similar-abilities peers and to learn from
more able children. It is important to consider that mutual help is
the faster way to share experiences and origami know-how.
-MODELLING: folding paper into origami is a way of teaching as much
by example as by precept. Children discover that also teachers have
difficulties while folding and reading origami schemes, they tend to
feel that we are involved in the same creative art and prefer our behaviour
while folding opening themselves, therefore, while speaking english
and participating in other activities.
-POSITIVE FEEDBACK: effort and work need praise and origami art products
capture this kind of feedback from peers, teachers, parents.
All this conclusive considerations has been deducted from the Robert
Fisher research in the Centre for Thinking Skills and adapted to our
own researches on the use of arts and crafts activities, in a continuity,
cross-curricular, sperimental teaching perspective.
.:: ORIGAMI INDEX
::.
.:: ORIGAMI IS AN ART ::
HOW ORIGAMI WORKS ::.
.:: ORIGAMI TEACHING :: LEARNING
TO LEARN ::.
:: ORIGAMI IN THE FL CLASSROOM
::.
.:: TOPIC BASED APPROACH :: TASK
BASED APPROACH ::.
