Too Much of a Good Thing
Module 1 Teacher for Learning
Activity #1- Identify a concept that is often misunderstood in my discipline and create an analogy to help make sense of it (Prior knowledge).
My discipline is Early Childhood Education. One of the misunderstood concepts when working with children is the idea of praise. Specifically, authentic praise and too much praise.
There seems to be a need to tell children how well they are doing and celebrate every little thing. This may be in response to a generation that grew up with the notion that ‘children should be seen and not heard”. However, research is now showing that too much praise, as well as the wrong kind of praise, can actually do more harm than good.
An analogy that might work is to have students share their favourite song. Talk about why it is their favourite and then ask them how they might feel if that was the only song they could ever listen to again. We could do the same thing with food. Then follow up with why “too much of a good thing” might not actually be good at all. We could also discuss other areas like medicine, exercise, vitamins, alcohol etc. Have students give examples.
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Example for "Too Much of a Good Thing":
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