IERG Full-Day Workshop (Example)

Workshop/Seminar Example:

IERG Full-Day Workshop

1. A Brief Guide to Imagination Education
   Participants will receive “A Brief Guide to Imaginative Education” by Owen Tyers. It provides an overview of the basic ideas and principles. Ideally participants should read the booklet beforehand.

2. Introduction to IE – PowerPoint presentation

3. Frameworks and Sample Lessons
   To underline how IE is different from regular forms of planning and teaching, we will show our planning frameworks. These are unlike any frameworks participants will likely have seen before, as they incorporate new and distinctive principles. We will work through a number of examples, showing how the frameworks can be used to plan imaginatively engaging lessons and units of study.

4. Lesson Planning: Part 1
   Participants will work in small groups of 3 or 4. The workshop leaders will help the groups prepare a sketch plan of a lesson or unit, using one of the planning frameworks.

5. Break

6. Twist TIE Game
   One of the more unfamiliar and difficult features of using the IE approach is feeling comfortable using some of the “cognitive tools” that engage students’ imaginations and emotions. This game is designed to both familiarize participants with what are the more unusual features of the approach. Participants will work in groups of 4 to 6. Questions and discussion.

7. Circular Frameworks
   We will also look at another of our planning frameworks. Many teachers have said that they find the Circular Planning Framework help them in initial planning.

8. Lesson Planning : Part 2
   The participants will gather again in the small groups they were in for activity 5. They will use the Circular Framework charts, continuing with the topic they selected earlier, constructing a lesson or unit plan. The participants should complete a lesson or unit plan, at least to the extent that they will leave the workshop with something they can use in teaching, and have learned enough about IE to see how it “works,” even if only a rudimentary way.

9. Break For Lunch

10. Tool Card Shuffle
    To increase participants’ understanding of how cognitive tools can be helpful in generating ideas for a lesson or unit, we will “play” the Tool Card Shuffle.”. It is designed to increase flexibility in using cognitive tools and help recognize their power to generate ideas for lessons and units.

11. Lesson Planning: Part 3
    At this point of the workshop the participants should begin to plan a unit of their own, individually or with a partner, on a topic of their choosing. They will also choose which of the frameworks they want to work with. Students as they finish will be invited to mount their plans in a place that is visible to all. Those who finish earlier may spend some time examining those of others. Approximately 20 minutes will be for their individual planning and 20 minutes for discussion of the results.

12. Break

13. Conclusion of the day
    Draw together the experiences of the day, the insights gained, the problems remaining, and the ways participants can now see to use IE in their own practice. We will look back on the Brief Guide and point up the main features of IE and its distinctiveness. If there is some time, and Internet access is available, we will introduce participants to some of the examples of units on the IERG website (http://www.ierg.net/lessonplans/unit_plans.php).

Contact: Dr. Gillian Judson, IERG, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6, email at gcj@sfu.ca. Visit our website at www.ierg.net.