GCSE Business Studies - some great lessons

You are offered here a set of four innovative and engaging games and activities to stimulate class discussion and to enhance students' knowledge of areas of theory that they can often find quite challenging. 

Lesson Rationale

The lesson aims to integrate principles of Accelerated Learning and Co-operative Learning Structures to provide a stimulating and active lesson. The primary aims in designing the lesson were to make it, and therefore the learning, memorable and to promote deeper understanding.  Plus, a dose of good old-fashioned laughter will hopefully help to enhance the classroom climate.

 

Making the learning memorable

Evidence shows that emotionally laden activities will generate more interest, engagement and retention because emotional learning has preferential processing in the brain.  In this lesson the novelty and fun aspects of the activity will promote emotional engagement, whilst the active, hands-on experience will engage the procedural memory.  If this wasn't enough to justify a fun lesson, it has been found that the cerebellum, the part of the brain that controls some motor functions such as coordination, also plays a role in memory.  By integrating energizers the activity should trigger the release of endorphins (the feel-good chemical) and adrenaline (the "challenge" hormone).

 

Promoting deep learning

The lesson incorporates a series of carefully structured activities to promote deeper understanding. It starts with an initial audit of each individual's own understanding; then requires students to actively process additional information through reflection and discussion. Reflection and discussion are important since researchers have found that brain development results from engaging the process of learning than achieving a specified outcome. That is, students learn more in the process of searching for meaning than from retrieving an answer. The visual and kinaesthetic nature of the activity will also support the brain's own processes for deriving meaning by making patterns out of experiences as it clearly demonstrates relationships and makes the link between structure and communication more explicit.

 

Learning can be fun!

Finally, the lesson is simple to deliver and great fun.

 

Additional Reading/Information:

'Accelerated Learning in Practice' Alistair Smith Network Educational Press, 2001

Co-operative Learning, Dr Spencer Kagan, Kagan Co-operative Learning, 1994

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