Teaching a Class. Tips?

[Ondrej.Cibulka]

Problem with teaching unit origami should be that many children fold many units and make one thing. And who will take it home? Better is to fold simple unit origami, which can fold each child for itself.

[unknownfolder]

Be sure while you are folding the models to not get lost in the process and completely alienate the children from what you are doing. I had a teacher who acted like she was just solving math problems on the board, and the class just happened to be there. Be sure to not let the kids get frustrated.

[notefolds]

Thanks all for your tips! I had the class today and it went amazingly well. The kids were all enchanted by the different models I brought. I showed them different levels of complexity for the same thing, like four different elephants, starting with easy then to intermediate to hard to difficult. They loved the modular origami most, especially the larger pieces. Joseph, I used your advice on kids wanting to learn those by saying "It took me 10 hours to fold this, so maybe next time."

We folded the throwing star. The night before I made a poster board and glued the model in its different stages so they could easily follow along. Some kids got it so quickly, I was impressed. Others required help on every single step. It took us about 35 minutes to get through folding it.

I told the kids that I started folding at their age (eight) and I think that was what really sunk in with them, that origami was not out of their reach. I bet there will be some future folders in that class! I think the next time I teach a class, I'll make a packet of diagrams with easy folds so the kids can try it at home.

Thank you all for your advice, and to anyone who gets the opportunity to teach, do it! It was definitely one of the most rewarding experiences I've had with origami.

[dragon man]

I wish someone had come and taught me origami when i was in primary school

[godnomis]

hey , i done this many times , with young kids, too the point where they took me out of class , too teach , because i never stop folding in class, i found a pecking bird, or a water bomb is best too start , its fast , and they get instant gratification, then i move up too a crane, i think some thing simple to start that has movement or is fun , and teaches simple things like reverse folds by example.

[redheadorigami]

OK guys, Im going to be teaching my little brother's class on friday, any tips?
What would be a good intermediate mode to teach?

[godnomis]

use a large piece of paper and fold it on the blackboard, too show the the way.

[redheadorigami]

use a large piece of paper and fold it on the blackboard, too show the the way.

Thankyou, did exactly that!

[booggerboy]

Hey Redhead,

What model did you teach, and what age group?

I've done a little origami teaching with children aged 6 to 11, but never to the whole class. Have often thought that using a visualiser would be beneficial (these are now common in UK schools, and allow items to be magnified through a projector onto a screen). With groups of 3 to 6 I would teach the trad frog, but I found that I would have to do a fair amount of intervening to allow a reasonable model to be made. This perhaps reduces the child's feeling of achievement. I like the frog as the fact you blow it up to finish adds some extra magic to the paper.

I did recently have some success teaching Tarumpty-Tum to a few groups of 20 or so adults, with a range of outcomes from snowballs to perfect. The point of this was to demonstrate different people need different levels of "instruction" to be able to complete a task, so even total failures fitted in with my LO. I did this by displaying a single slide (ppt) with 6 steps, giving them a square piece of paper with the CP printed on one side, and leaving them to it for a few minutes with no extra help. The choice for Tarumpty was inspired by another O forum, it only uses mountain/valley folds and it is an "Action Toy" which can be used like dominoes rather pleasingly.

Obviously I didn't have to worry about behaviour management with the adults, and could rely on them to be able to read and follow instructions. That said, the success rate was low, 2 or 3 out of 20 would produce a working model, and the quality of the folding was poor. This can be attributed to a couple of things - the fact I didn't go through the basics of how to make an accurate fold (i.e. lining up land marks, pulling paper toward/away depending on taste etc), and also the fact that they were not expecting to fold anything (they were finance/administrative staff expecting to be briefed on training materials for a software system).

Ok - didn't mean to wax on in my first post, but thought some may find this relevant (and also want to know the answer to my starting question).

BB

[godnomis]

i would of replyed too this if it wasnt adressed too redhead. shes hot.

[redheadorigami]

BB: I taught the class the traditiona lotus and crane, they used 15 cm square paper for the lotus and 7.5 cm square japanese paper for the crane.
Godnomis: Wait, what?

[Trakthor]

Just to add some of my personal experience. I was invited to "youth center" (don't know the exact term but it's the place were little kids go after school waiting for their parents to pick them up) to talk, present and teach origami. Age range of kids was 6-I0 and the class was around 28 kids.
Most interesting parts for them was not the first short talking about origami, but presenting some photos of famous folders and their models.
The next great thing was that I let them take all my models (not many of them and I don't have very complex models folded yet- see my FLICKR page). They returned them and they didn't damage any of it.

After that I taught them this simple duck

This was easy but they want more so I tried to teach them origami flapping bird. Some of them were very talented but most of my time I went from kid to kid and assist them personally.

So the hard part was maintain their attention the whole time and the count of the kids. Also I used A4 size copy paper for presentation. The next time I will use some bigger paper.

[booggerboy]

Ok,

redhead: did you have to give individual attention to each child for particular folds of the crane? (I've found that for the petal-fold when making a trad frog, each child would at least need help with the first one - and some for all 4).

Trakthor: I like the idea of showing examples around the class (and it's great they all came back in one piece!). If you are going to do a series of lessons, then a different model to introduce each new type of fold makes sense (like using your duck to introduce reverse folds). If you did it again would you pick the flapping bird as their next model, or go for something intermediary?

I think that action models - like the tarumpty mentioned previously - can give a simple model more attraction. Another action model that appealed to me is called "talking frog" in a Rick Beech book, which is not too hard to fold but has a very pleasing talking action.

I know that most of us have gone through the learning process by introducing more and more complex models (most books work this way too). But it's great to hear examples of translating this process into groups/class situations. This doesn't always have to work btw - it can fail too.

Random thoughts:

As a teacher I would sometimes make simple origami models as "prizes" for children, and try and complete the last steps in front of them before giving it out. This is good with models which only take their final form during the last folds (again I'll mention the frog for this, as blowing it up is good fun). I guess a waterbomb does this (again by blowing up). Apologies if there's a topic on models which reveal themselves in the final steps already in existence.

BB

[godnomis]

individual attention , for me , would be , doing it next too them with there model, then unfolding it , then saying "you try"
what is "individual attention" for you mean?