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Hi everyone
This post expands some of the ideas in September's ezine.
Those of you who have been able to attend BFLG meetings in the North or the South will have experienced our popular Learning Clinic sessions, where individuals bring along their presentation or training challenges, and in small groups, members enable each other to explore options for delivering information differently.
We’re really pleased when members try out new ideas and share with us how it went afterwards. Sometimes these ideas don’t always work as well as their innovators hope – and we’ve all got experience of that!
Our message is always ‘well done’ for trying, as every step you take is progress; keep on refining; sound out other brain friendly practitioners for more ideas; and see how these additional 5 thoughts can help.
1. If your session’s going to involve interactivity, make it interactive right from the off. So, for example, if you have attended any of our training events, you will know that very often as soon as people come into the room, we ask them to work in pairs or small groups and wander round the room, often finding out information of relevance to the learning topic from displays on the walls, whilst getting to know others in the group. Participants then expect interactivity as the 'norm' and it's much easier to get them up and moving later in the session.
2. Never use the phrase ‘role-play’ – this may be demotivating to some in your audience. Suggestions include - 'demonstration', 'practice', 'have a go', 'experiment' (thanks Steve R), 'find out what that means' etc. And see suggestion 5 for what REALLY makes the difference here.
3. Monitor body language carefully and if necessary give individuals permission to opt out. We have found in practice that most people will engage with a group activity. If someone is really reluctant, to the extent that they don't get up off their chair, a quick personal chat acknowledging their discomfort and offering them the opportunity not to participate (or sometimes to leave if they consider the whole event is not for them) is usually all it takes for them to participate fully, and sometimes become your most ardent converts!
4. Never ask your audience to do anything you’re not prepared to do yourself - from something as simple as making sure you're already standing up, if that's what you want your group to do next; to playing a part in whatever demonstration you're delivering.
5. Always need as many ‘volunteers’ for your exercises as there are people in the group. One of the best ways round individual 'role-plays' is to get an entire group to demonstrate together. For example, at last week's How to be a Brain Friendly Trainer, the whole group represented different parts within the brain, and demonstrated how a simple word like 'chocolate' can have different effects on different brain parts/functions. The point here is that if someone feels silly, the whole group is also looking, sounding and acting silly - including the learning facilitator - so they do not feel 'singled out' or 'picked upon'!
So if you're introducing brain friendly ideas in a piecemeal way, try these ideas - they will help! And better still, learn a brain friendly model you can consistently apply, which will reduce the need for you to handle challenge from within your groups!
Keep on innovating everyone, as it's how we're all learning, let us all in the BFLG know how you get on, and contact Stella or me if you want to know more!
Ann
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