Active Learning at the College Level

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This has been a FABULOUS summer integrating gamification, technology, and active learning during a graduate course at Providence college on Language Disorders.

Regretfully this is the last summer as the program it was part of has at this point been discontinued. It has been a real pleasure to teach here the last four years each time adjusting the curriculum with new ideas. I have grown so much, as I learned new strategies in pedagogy through my own continuing education and modeled this in this classroom. As a speech and language pathologist, I love being able to share our profession and how we can support teachers in the classroom.

Using mystery lego bags to learn how to take a language sample.

I am a believer in project-based learning as you are able to see the application of the theories that you are teaching in the class. Each year I have the students work on a multi-day lesson plan that has a read-aloud as it’s the foundation.

They begin by taking a language sample pre-teaching the lesson to get an idea of a student’s language needs as well as their own ability to make some simple analysis of the student’s strengths and needs.

They will take another language sample at the end of their practicum with the student. This is to illustrate the growth both of the student they are working with as well as their increased skill in the analysis of the narrative structure.

Each class besides for the deep dive into a particular speech and language disorder also has a teaching technique that might be useful to support speech and language learning in the classroom.

Using Word Clouds to summarize and explain key points

Using the creation of a short film after researching a disability to present to the class rather than an oral presentation.

Escape Room: This has been part of my class for the last two years. To unlock each of the locks there is a video with clues that not only test their knowledge of the content but also creates opportunities for them to experience a teaching strategy.

Egg Dash: Inspired by Edrenaline Rush by John Meehan that has the students select an egg, rush to their team, complete the challenge inside and race back to retrieve another egg before the timer goes off. Great for building teamwork and allowed me also to gauge what content might need to be reviewed to solidify understanding.

The students completed their lesson plan incorporating strategies for building background knowledge, incorporating direct teaching of tier two vocabulary words, teaching during the reading process, utilizing Blooms Taxonomy to develop comprehension questions, providing the scaffolding needed for their student as well as suggestions for a student who is an English Language Learner. Each lesson also had some type of written response to the literature to solidify that reading and writing are language-based activities and areas in which a speech and language pathologist can be instrumental in supporting.

Here are their lesson plans:

HotShots lesson plan

Magic Tree House lesson plan

Ladybug Girl and Bingo

When Sophie Gets Angry-Really, Really Angry

Active learning, project-based assessments, gamification and utilizing technology is not just for the young student but also for the adult learner. One of the best outcomes of the class was seeing the application of the techniques used in the graduate class carry over to the lessons that the students created.