Anticipatory Activities

Fisher and Frey provide preservice teacher with a variety of activities to quickly engage their students in the introduction to a unit, lesson, or concept. Doing so, is the first step in engaging the curiosity of students, ask critical questions, and be better equipped to recall information. They suggest many different activities to engage students before a lesson has even begun.

One of these suggestions involves staging some manner of performance for the students in a discrepant event. For example, if I was teaching a lesson on the Russian Revolution, which I may have the opportunity to do this semester, I would like to read peasant letters that described the hardships under the budding communist dictatorship. I may even dress like a peasant, babushka (scarf) and all. After all, Fisher and Frey claim that these memorable events evoke an emotional connection to one's memory. I feel that the image of the crazy student teacher dressed like a peasant and talking with a think, Russian accent may be embedded in the skulls of my sophomores; they WILL remember that a bread shortage started the Revolution!!....but maybe that it didn't quite go as planned...

A second suggestion for an anticipatory act is providing visual displays for the students. The first thing that came to my mind was simply photographs, pictures, art, etc. However while I was reading, I realized that I was thinking a bit too narrowly. The whole, wide internet is at my fingertips and, as I am excited to learn about in EDF 425, there are ways that I can incorporate a variety of video, audio clips, etc. into the introduction to the unit. One of the tools that we are going to discuss with Dr. Visser is a website called Thinglink that will allow me to choose a picture and embed text, YouTube links, etc. in the photograph or image for a discussion. This could provide an opportunity for me to use the K-W-L Technique, which would encourage students to begin to think critically before the lesson has even begun!!

Finally, a third suggestion, the anticipation guide, provides a visual model to which students can refer. I personally enjoyed the use of the anticipation guide on the mock lesson of Pullman Strike. I actually remember learning about Pullman from my US History course over the summer, so I knew several facts before we began to investigate. (If I had not, I would have done very poorly because it has been over ten years since my last U.S. History class...) I would like to occasionally incorporate these guides in my lessons, especially when it is a topic that everyone thinks they know. I think it can be used to dissolve preconceived notions about certain topics. For example, people credit President Lincoln to be this great emancipator of slaves. However, his motives for the Emancipation Proclamation were much more politically than ethically motivated. I'm not saying Lincoln was a bad guy; I just believe that this type of guide can be extremely useful in many situations.