Vegas
What is it?
The “Vegas” strategy is a technique that adds a little bit of “umph” to a day’s lesson. However, its soul purpose is not just for sparkle or laughs, it is used to reinforce a learning objective of that day. In Teach Like a Champion the author says that “Vegas” can be a when students act out an action verb they just learned, singing the long division song, or having charades to see who best acts out they day’s vocabulary word (pg 141, Teach Like a Champion.) These are just a few examples, but they are perfect illustrations of how a little bit of “production” in the classroom and can go a long way in terms of reinforcing material and hitting a concept home. This strategy allows students to engage and physically relate the material they are learning to themselves and the world around them
Why should it work?
The “Vegas” strategy should work in relation to meaningful learning strategies, or strategies that help enhance storage and retention of information. There are multiple types of meaningful learning strategies but the “Vegas” strategy best fits with visual imagery. Although “Vegas” seems to be more kinesthetic, I would personally mold this category in visual-kinesthetic because elements of both are often used in the presentation of “Vegas”. This strategy could be visual because a teacher may ask students to imagine how a certain event, lets say from history, might have looked. “Vegas” comes into play when a teacher asks them to act out this event. This type of learning strategy asks students to take it beyond the pages and become physically, visually, even verbally connected to the subject. This could also relate to another meaningful learning strategy known as elaboration. Instead of elaborating on a subject through questions, they elaborate through actions creating a mental connection that stores it away in one of their mind’s filing cabinets.
“Vegas” is also connected to retrieval and factors that affect it. There are multiple factors that affect retrieval and the “Vegas” strategy touches on a few of these. First, there is distinctiveness. “Vegas” presents information in a way that is distinct and memorable, therefore making retrieval easier. It is also related to multiple connections with existing knowledge. The “Vegas” strategy gets students to create their own connection through visual kinesthetic activities that relate to the subject matter in some way. The more connections a student can establish, the more likely they will be able to retrieve the learned information.
How will it look?
As a future special educator, I feel that the “Vegas” strategy will be a helpful tool in the classroom especially for creating hands on connections to the subject matter that I will be teaching. As mentioned before, I will be focusing on the academic curriculum as well as life skills and I believe that “Vegas” will be beneficial in both areas. I feel like this strategy may be specifically beneficial when teaching certain steps that go along with life skills such as tying a shoe, or making a sandwich. I may ask my students to act out how they would perform these steps though pantomime or even teach them a song and have them sing it together as a class while a student acts it out. I feel that by having visual and kinesthetic connections to a concept, my students will be able to associate these activities with a particular concept. This would also work for teaching vocabulary and other core subjects because they would also be able to associate what we are doing to the activity or action. I feel like this strategy will not only be a beneficial teaching tool, but will break up the lesson or be used as a transition from concept to concept. It would act as a good way to wrap up one idea and move together in an engaging manor.
The “Vegas” strategy is a technique that adds a little bit of “umph” to a day’s lesson. However, its soul purpose is not just for sparkle or laughs, it is used to reinforce a learning objective of that day. In Teach Like a Champion the author says that “Vegas” can be a when students act out an action verb they just learned, singing the long division song, or having charades to see who best acts out they day’s vocabulary word (pg 141, Teach Like a Champion.) These are just a few examples, but they are perfect illustrations of how a little bit of “production” in the classroom and can go a long way in terms of reinforcing material and hitting a concept home. This strategy allows students to engage and physically relate the material they are learning to themselves and the world around them
Why should it work?
The “Vegas” strategy should work in relation to meaningful learning strategies, or strategies that help enhance storage and retention of information. There are multiple types of meaningful learning strategies but the “Vegas” strategy best fits with visual imagery. Although “Vegas” seems to be more kinesthetic, I would personally mold this category in visual-kinesthetic because elements of both are often used in the presentation of “Vegas”. This strategy could be visual because a teacher may ask students to imagine how a certain event, lets say from history, might have looked. “Vegas” comes into play when a teacher asks them to act out this event. This type of learning strategy asks students to take it beyond the pages and become physically, visually, even verbally connected to the subject. This could also relate to another meaningful learning strategy known as elaboration. Instead of elaborating on a subject through questions, they elaborate through actions creating a mental connection that stores it away in one of their mind’s filing cabinets.
“Vegas” is also connected to retrieval and factors that affect it. There are multiple factors that affect retrieval and the “Vegas” strategy touches on a few of these. First, there is distinctiveness. “Vegas” presents information in a way that is distinct and memorable, therefore making retrieval easier. It is also related to multiple connections with existing knowledge. The “Vegas” strategy gets students to create their own connection through visual kinesthetic activities that relate to the subject matter in some way. The more connections a student can establish, the more likely they will be able to retrieve the learned information.
How will it look?
As a future special educator, I feel that the “Vegas” strategy will be a helpful tool in the classroom especially for creating hands on connections to the subject matter that I will be teaching. As mentioned before, I will be focusing on the academic curriculum as well as life skills and I believe that “Vegas” will be beneficial in both areas. I feel like this strategy may be specifically beneficial when teaching certain steps that go along with life skills such as tying a shoe, or making a sandwich. I may ask my students to act out how they would perform these steps though pantomime or even teach them a song and have them sing it together as a class while a student acts it out. I feel that by having visual and kinesthetic connections to a concept, my students will be able to associate these activities with a particular concept. This would also work for teaching vocabulary and other core subjects because they would also be able to associate what we are doing to the activity or action. I feel like this strategy will not only be a beneficial teaching tool, but will break up the lesson or be used as a transition from concept to concept. It would act as a good way to wrap up one idea and move together in an engaging manor.