Type I Activities
Type I Enrichment: General Exploratory Experiences
One of the enduring problems of teaching is how to motivate students to such an extent that they will act on their interests in a creative and productive way. The major purpose of Type I Enrichment is to include within the overall school program carefully selected experiences that are purposefully developed to be highly motivational. This type of enrichment consists of experiences and activities designed to expose students to a wide variety of disciplines, topics, ideas, concepts, issues, and events that are not ordinarily covered in the general curriculum. A number of typical Type I methods of delivery are listed in the side bar of this page. Type I can be based on regular curricular topics or innovative outgrowths of prescribed topics, but in order to qualify as a bona fide Type I Experience, any and all planned activities in this category must be purposefully designed to stimulate new or present interests that may lead to more intensive follow-up on the parts of individual students or small groups of students. An activity can be called a Type I Experience only if it meets the following three conditions: (1) students are aware that the activity is an invitation to various kinds and levels of follow-up, (2) there is a systematic debriefing of the experience in order to learn who might want to explore further involvement, and the ways the follow-up might be pursued, and (3) there are various opportunities, resources, and encouragement for diverse kinds of follow-up. An experience is clearly not a Type I if every student is required to follow-up an activity in the same or similar way. Required follow-up is a regular curricular practice; and although prescribed follow-up certainly has a genuine role in general education, it almost always fails to capitalize on differences in students' interest and learning styles. The Resource Guide at the end of this article provides references to detailed planning guides and strategies for implementing and following up on Type I activities.
Three issues related to Type I experiences need be emphasized. First, Type I experiences should be carefully selected and planned so that there is a high probability that they will be exciting and appealing to students. Visiting speakers, for example, should be selected for both their expertise in a particular area and their ability to energize and capture the imagination of students. Persons presenting Type I experiences should be provided with enough orientation about the model to understand the objective described above and the need to help students explore the realms and ranges of opportunity for further involvement that are available within various age and grade considerations. Without such an orientation, these kinds of experiences may be viewed as merely informative; and thus, even a very exciting experience will not have the "feed forward" context that should characterize Type I Enrichment activities.
A second issue related to Type I Enrichment concerns the audiences for whom a given experience is made available and the ascending order of complexity of these kinds of experiences. A majority of Type I activities should be presented to all students in a classroom, grade level, or cross-grade group. The primary purpose of Type I is to introduce students to topics or activities that are new to the majority of the group. Because lack of exposure to the almost unlimited range of topics that can be used for Type I Enrichment, students may not know whether or not they might develop a sustained interest in a particular topic unless they are required to participate. Thus, for example, it may be worthwhile to introduce all middle grade students to a topic such as computer assisted design (CAD) through a demonstration or presentation by a specialist on this topic. Following the activity and an assessment of the levels of interest of all students in the group, an advanced Type I might be planned for highly interested students that pursues the material in greater depth or that involves a field trip to a company or laboratory that uses CAD technology. In this case, there is an interest-based rationale for a special grouping or field trip that is different from offering field trips only to high ability students. A general or introductory Type I should, of course, include all students at given grade(s) levels.
A third issue related to Type I Enrichment is the position of a given experience on the structured to unstructured continuum. Although Type I experiences are, by definition, planned and presented, we can still achieve a fair amount of flexibility by following a few simple guidelines. First, whenever possible, some estimate of general student interests should be obtained as part of the planning for a series of Type I activities. A good menu of Type I experiences should be diversified across many topics and curricular categories. Such diversification improves the probability of influencing broader ranges of student interest, and, accordingly, increasing the number of students that will select an area in which they may like to pursue follow-up activities. Second, even prescribed Type I topics should be planned in a way that encourages maximum student involvement in an activity. High-end learning is more than just presenting unusual topics. Rather, hands-on, problem solving activities, and activities that require discussion, debate, and confrontations with topics and issues are much more effective in prompting the kinds of affective reactions that help students to personalize a topic and to make a commitment to more intensive follow-up.
The Type I dimension of the Enrichment Triad Model can be an extremely exciting aspect of overall schooling because it creates a legitimate "slot" within the school for bringing the vast world of knowledge and ideas that are above and beyond the regular curriculum to students' attention. It is also an excellent vehicle for teams of teachers, students, and parents to plan and work together on a relatively easy-to-implement component of the model. Type I Enrichment is an excellent vehicle for getting started in an enrichment cluster. For example, a group of students in a film making cluster used the suggestions of a local professional in this area to explore options and to determine the kinds of films they could produce within the time, budget, and equipment constraints to which they were bound. Specific procedures and planning guides for organizing and implementing Type I Enrichment are included in related publications listed in the Resource Guide at the end of this article.
One of the enduring problems of teaching is how to motivate students to such an extent that they will act on their interests in a creative and productive way. The major purpose of Type I Enrichment is to include within the overall school program carefully selected experiences that are purposefully developed to be highly motivational. This type of enrichment consists of experiences and activities designed to expose students to a wide variety of disciplines, topics, ideas, concepts, issues, and events that are not ordinarily covered in the general curriculum. A number of typical Type I methods of delivery are listed in the side bar of this page. Type I can be based on regular curricular topics or innovative outgrowths of prescribed topics, but in order to qualify as a bona fide Type I Experience, any and all planned activities in this category must be purposefully designed to stimulate new or present interests that may lead to more intensive follow-up on the parts of individual students or small groups of students. An activity can be called a Type I Experience only if it meets the following three conditions: (1) students are aware that the activity is an invitation to various kinds and levels of follow-up, (2) there is a systematic debriefing of the experience in order to learn who might want to explore further involvement, and the ways the follow-up might be pursued, and (3) there are various opportunities, resources, and encouragement for diverse kinds of follow-up. An experience is clearly not a Type I if every student is required to follow-up an activity in the same or similar way. Required follow-up is a regular curricular practice; and although prescribed follow-up certainly has a genuine role in general education, it almost always fails to capitalize on differences in students' interest and learning styles. The Resource Guide at the end of this article provides references to detailed planning guides and strategies for implementing and following up on Type I activities.
Three issues related to Type I experiences need be emphasized. First, Type I experiences should be carefully selected and planned so that there is a high probability that they will be exciting and appealing to students. Visiting speakers, for example, should be selected for both their expertise in a particular area and their ability to energize and capture the imagination of students. Persons presenting Type I experiences should be provided with enough orientation about the model to understand the objective described above and the need to help students explore the realms and ranges of opportunity for further involvement that are available within various age and grade considerations. Without such an orientation, these kinds of experiences may be viewed as merely informative; and thus, even a very exciting experience will not have the "feed forward" context that should characterize Type I Enrichment activities.
A second issue related to Type I Enrichment concerns the audiences for whom a given experience is made available and the ascending order of complexity of these kinds of experiences. A majority of Type I activities should be presented to all students in a classroom, grade level, or cross-grade group. The primary purpose of Type I is to introduce students to topics or activities that are new to the majority of the group. Because lack of exposure to the almost unlimited range of topics that can be used for Type I Enrichment, students may not know whether or not they might develop a sustained interest in a particular topic unless they are required to participate. Thus, for example, it may be worthwhile to introduce all middle grade students to a topic such as computer assisted design (CAD) through a demonstration or presentation by a specialist on this topic. Following the activity and an assessment of the levels of interest of all students in the group, an advanced Type I might be planned for highly interested students that pursues the material in greater depth or that involves a field trip to a company or laboratory that uses CAD technology. In this case, there is an interest-based rationale for a special grouping or field trip that is different from offering field trips only to high ability students. A general or introductory Type I should, of course, include all students at given grade(s) levels.
A third issue related to Type I Enrichment is the position of a given experience on the structured to unstructured continuum. Although Type I experiences are, by definition, planned and presented, we can still achieve a fair amount of flexibility by following a few simple guidelines. First, whenever possible, some estimate of general student interests should be obtained as part of the planning for a series of Type I activities. A good menu of Type I experiences should be diversified across many topics and curricular categories. Such diversification improves the probability of influencing broader ranges of student interest, and, accordingly, increasing the number of students that will select an area in which they may like to pursue follow-up activities. Second, even prescribed Type I topics should be planned in a way that encourages maximum student involvement in an activity. High-end learning is more than just presenting unusual topics. Rather, hands-on, problem solving activities, and activities that require discussion, debate, and confrontations with topics and issues are much more effective in prompting the kinds of affective reactions that help students to personalize a topic and to make a commitment to more intensive follow-up.
The Type I dimension of the Enrichment Triad Model can be an extremely exciting aspect of overall schooling because it creates a legitimate "slot" within the school for bringing the vast world of knowledge and ideas that are above and beyond the regular curriculum to students' attention. It is also an excellent vehicle for teams of teachers, students, and parents to plan and work together on a relatively easy-to-implement component of the model. Type I Enrichment is an excellent vehicle for getting started in an enrichment cluster. For example, a group of students in a film making cluster used the suggestions of a local professional in this area to explore options and to determine the kinds of films they could produce within the time, budget, and equipment constraints to which they were bound. Specific procedures and planning guides for organizing and implementing Type I Enrichment are included in related publications listed in the Resource Guide at the end of this article.
Source: http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/sem/semart10.html