My kid and I had a fun time with some Animal flashcards. I thought it was worth writing up.
Now, they’re supposed to be mere reading practice, but my kid can already read the animal names. In a typical situation, he’d be sent off to the corner as the dreaded “early finisher.”
But here are three ways we transformed these low-level flashcards into tasks that maintained my high-energy kid’s interest.
1. Make Groups
Now, my first thought was to use a Hilda Taba-style Concept Formation task.
We’d start by making a couple of partners, and then enlarge them into three to five groups – using whatever criteria my kid picked.
I use Concept Formation all of the time from class mottos to character archetypes.
However, my kid is smart and stubborn and resisted the idea of making large groups. Oh well. In a class, this would probably have worked better!
2. Partners
So, my kid rebelled against my initial plan. He only wanted to form pairs. “Oh, okay. Let’s do it!” I was eager to see what he’d come up with.
He ended up with these pairs:
- Turtle and Lizard — because they’re green.
- Ant and Bee — because they have black eyes
- Giraffe and Lion — because they are both found on the savannah
- butterfly and owl — they both have wings
- lady bug and pig — they’re both “have a reputation for cuteness”
- cat and goat — they’re my favorite mobs in Minecraft
Here’s the beauty: do this with 10 students and they’ll all come up with different pairs for different reasons. The variety of criteria will astonish you. Everything from the bland “both are green” to the hilarious “reputation for cuteness” and the highly personal “my favorite mobs in Minecraft.”
So then, after letting my kid form a bunch of pairs, I switched tactics.
3. A Forced Pair
Next, I picked two animals that I thought had no obvious similarities: the duck and the giraffe. “Why would these be partners?” I asked.
He cocked his head. “They both have long noses.”
“Oh,” I said, “I would have said long necks but that’s another right answer.”
Again, ask a dozen students and you’ll find all sorts of different reasoning for why two random animals were partnered together.
In fact, you might press ahead and ask, “Give me three reasons why I’d group these two animals together.”
Or ask for specific reasoning.
- Give me the least interesting reason we’d group these animals.
- What’s the weirdest reason we’d group these two?
- Why would an evil scientist group these two animals as partners?
Anyway. That’s a few ways that I’d upgrade a pack of low-level flashcards and get students really thinking.