Learning Through Experience

After completing this lesson, you should understand the following concepts and know how to apply them when working with youth:

Instruction:

Kids (and adults) learn life skills most effectively when they have the opportunity to experience activities, to reflect upon their experience, and to apply what they have learned to other situations. This learning process is often called experiential learning.

The Learning Process

Although "experiential learning" may sound very sophisticated, it’s actually very basic. Experiential learning simply means learning through experiencing, or learning-by-doing.

Kids learn and remember best
when they experience and
discover for themselves.

The success of experiential learning depends on you to guide learners and help them to apply their knowledge and experiences to other situations. You are the key to turning activities into genuine learning experiences.

"Do It"

The learning process starts with the experience. The "do" part of the learning model involves performing an activity.

The more kids interact with what they are learning, the better they learn it. People usually remember 20% of what they hear, 50% of what they see, and 90% of what they do. Therefore, successful activity planning stresses learning-by-doing, which means that kids do the work themselves. In contrast, lecturing or simply talking to kids and not allowing them to engage in "hands-on" activities are less effective ways to teach.

"Tell me and I forget,
teach me and I remember,
involve me and I learn."

-- Benjamin Franklin

When planning activities for children, remember that children have different needs and abilities depending on their ages and personalities. (See Lesson 1 to review the information on youth development.) For example, young kids have short attention spans -- especially if they have been in school all day. Therefore, activities with young children should be short and involve high levels of physical and mental action. It is also a good idea to keep activities light and informal, because kids should have fun while they’re learning and doing.

Lesson 4, "Managing Groups of Kids," will provide more information on group management techniques.

"What Happened? What’s Important?"

• What did you do?
• What happened?
• What did you see? feel? hear? taste?
• What feelings did you have during the activity?
• What was the most difficult part of the activity? What was the easiest?
• What did you notice about the way you worked with other people?
• What did people in your group do to help make you successful?
• What problems or issues seemed to happen over and over?
• How was today’s activity like past activities? How was it different?

Notice that all of the questions listed above are open-ended. They cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no." Instead, the questions seek more detail and require the kids to process their learning experience. When asking questions, try to direct the questions to the entire group instead of at specific individuals. Letting the kids volunteer their responses helps create a more positive learning environment than putting individual kids "on the spot."

"So What? Now What?"

After doing the activity and reflecting upon it, it’s time to help kids go beyond what they learned from the activity by helping them apply that information to real life situations. This is where you can help kids translate the skills they learned in the activity into skills that are useful long after the activity is finished. In other words, you can help them turn activity skills into life skills.

Your task is to help youth identify ways to relate activity experiences to the outside world. The following questions will help you with this task:

• What did you learn about yourself during this activity?
• What did you learn today that can help you in your daily life?
• What similar experiences have you had?
• What similar challenges/feelings have you faced? What did you do then?
• If you were in a situation like this again, what would you do differently?
• What do you need to remember from this activity that will help you in future activities?
• How can you apply what you learned to a new situation?
• What difference can these observations or reactions make at home or school?
• What are you going to do with what you have learned today?

If kids don’t immediately respond to your questions, be patient and endure the silence; the group will eventually speak up.

Doing activities is critical to the learning experience.  However, creating an ideal learning experience entails going beyond the activity and helping the learners "process" what they do and learn.  If you would like to plan an experiential learning activity for your youth group, you might consider organizing a service project, such as a park clean-up.  Click here to continue by completing the Lesson 2 Activity.

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References

Aamot, M. E., & Barkman, S. Experiential Learning Model: A Teaching Packet to Use with Adults/Volunteers/Youth.

Crow, L. A., & Nordick, M. (1998). Teaching 4-H Projects Experientially: Five Fundamental Resources for Children and Youth. (1997). Minneapolis, MN: Search Institute.

Herrmann, P. (1994). How to Plan Successful Activities for Youth Groups. University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension. http://www.uwex.edu/disted/infrsrce/412.htm

Hoover, A., Steinback, J., & Wakefield, J. (1994). Youth as Trustees and Youth in Governance: Instructor’s Guide. Fort Wayne, IN: Community Partnerships with Youth.

Teaching Packet to Use with Adults and Youth. North Dakota State University Extension Service.

Westwood, G. & Mullen, S. The Learning Process. In Training Trainers to Teach. Chicago, IL: Beatrice Foundation.