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. 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. 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.
This type of learning strategy asks students to take it beyond the pages and become physically, visually, even verbally connected to the subject. 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. This technique 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.
17 авг 2015
