Jennifer Stanchfield’s post on the important ingredients for teaching and group facilitation. Techniques for maximizing engagement, reflection and building a positive group or classroom environment.

My last two posts have focused on methods for positively influencing learning outcomes with groups through strong beginnings. I shared some of my favorite activities for starting off with style and creating a “hook” to engage participants from the moment they walk through the door including the use of postcards, objects and quotes.   These [...]

Promoting new ways to engage groups in reflective practice has been a personal passion and focus of my work as an educator. From the beginning of my career as an education and clinician in therapeutic and educational settings I noticed that both facilitators and participants often struggle with engaging in reflection. In books, articles and [...]

  In my last post I described how I have been re-purposing the well-known ice-breaker Have You Ever? into Anyone Who as a strategy to engage participants in reflecting on or reviewing content from a lesson. I recently had great success using this game in adult staff training days, in guidance groups and in a [...]

If you are reading this post, chances are you believe it is important to find ways to actively engage learners in your classroom, boardroom or group counseling setting.  However, when we have a lot of material to cover in our lesson plans or agendas some of us might find ourselves forgetting just how important movement [...]

Check out yesterday’s Wood ‘N’ Barnes Friday Lesson Post. Inspired by Journaling in the Classroom: An educator shares how she has used journaling prompts from The Me I See, 2E with her students. Heidi Pauer, a High School Language Arts Teacher from Bow, NH, shared a couple of fun ideas with us. The first was [...]

This week The Firefly Group posted an article in their online newsletter about using the Miniature Metaphors Processing Tool.  Thanks to Brian Remer and The Firefly Group for your review! The Firefly Group works to create a collaborative learning environment by using playful methods. They work with businesses, non-profits, and government agencies in mission & [...]

Latest Wood ‘N’ Barnes Friday Lesson: Thoughts on Sharing Journal Entries With Others Excerpts from The Me I See: Click Here to Read Full Post

The Disappearance of Neighborhood Games of Kick-the Can, Part Two: Strategies for Helping Participants of All Ages Learn Through Play.   In Monday’s post I mentioned that I had observed a trend of children and adolescents missing out the development of important social & emotional skills because of a lack of time for “free play” [...]

In my work with students in a variety of schools and treatment programs I have noticed over recent years that they increasingly seem to struggle with group decision- making. I often observe students on the playground during recess coming to ask teachers for help in resolving even the simplest disagreements or conflicts. They often depend [...]