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PITTSBURG —
Once a gooey way for young children to while away idle hours, Play Dough is making a comeback in the classroom as an educational tool. Area elementary, middle and high school teachers on Tuesday morning began learning how to utilize the iconic goo to enhance lessons in economics and vocabulary.
More than 30 teachers gathered in Russ Hall listened to curriculum and instruction professor Kenny McDougle explain Playful Economics, a program that has integrated Play Dough into 15 lessons. According to the Council for Economic Education, which publishes it, the program "provides concrete experiences that promote learning."
The lessons include goods and services, production, trade, money, saving and investing and cost and profits, among others. It also features way to connect those lessons to books teachers have selected for their classes.
McDougle said school districts increasingly are placing more emphasis on teaching economics to kids at a younger age.
"It helps them get an early start on financial literacy," McDougle said. "Kids growing up don't have a lot of knowledge of financial issues. Hopefully they'll grow up better able to make good financial decisions. And that's what economics is; making good decisions from limited resources."
The Play Dough will be used in the lessons as a way to engage the students with concrete examples of the subjects they're learning. For example, it can be modeled into an example of a consumer good — or widget, in economics parlance — such as the tea set. Or, as the teachers learned, it can be used to create an assembly line where teams compete to produce the most "hamburgers" in a 10-minute period.
"They can also trade their goods or barter them," McDougle said. "It may or may not happen. If they can't trade it, they could make something else or find someone else who wants what they have. They also can learn to use money, which makes transactions much easier."
Patty Yoakum, a middle school language arts teacher at St. Patrick Catholic School in Parsons, said the value of the lessons is apparent.
"I don't think we were prepared much for economics much, even in college," Yoakum said. "And look at our economy. Kids need to be better educated about this."
Diane Harper, a Title I teacher at St. Paul Elementary School, said she would like to see hands-on lessons developed for kids. The traditional model of teaching, she said, lets many students fall through the cracks.
Once a gooey way for young children to while away idle hours, Play Dough is making a comeback in the classroom as an educational tool. Area elementary, middle and high school teachers on Tuesday morning began learning how to utilize the iconic goo to enhance lessons in economics and vocabulary.
More than 30 teachers gathered in Russ Hall listened to curriculum and instruction professor Kenny McDougle explain Playful Economics, a program that has integrated Play Dough into 15 lessons. According to the Council for Economic Education, which publishes it, the program "provides concrete experiences that promote learning."
The lessons include goods and services, production, trade, money, saving and investing and cost and profits, among others. It also features way to connect those lessons to books teachers have selected for their classes.
McDougle said school districts increasingly are placing more emphasis on teaching economics to kids at a younger age.
"It helps them get an early start on financial literacy," McDougle said. "Kids growing up don't have a lot of knowledge of financial issues. Hopefully they'll grow up better able to make good financial decisions. And that's what economics is; making good decisions from limited resources."
The Play Dough will be used in the lessons as a way to engage the students with concrete examples of the subjects they're learning. For example, it can be modeled into an example of a consumer good — or widget, in economics parlance — such as the tea set. Or, as the teachers learned, it can be used to create an assembly line where teams compete to produce the most "hamburgers" in a 10-minute period.
"They can also trade their goods or barter them," McDougle said. "It may or may not happen. If they can't trade it, they could make something else or find someone else who wants what they have. They also can learn to use money, which makes transactions much easier."
Patty Yoakum, a middle school language arts teacher at St. Patrick Catholic School in Parsons, said the value of the lessons is apparent.
"I don't think we were prepared much for economics much, even in college," Yoakum said. "And look at our economy. Kids need to be better educated about this."
Diane Harper, a Title I teacher at St. Paul Elementary School, said she would like to see hands-on lessons developed for kids. The traditional model of teaching, she said, lets many students fall through the cracks.
"Kids are different, homework is different, and there's not always a parent at home anymore," Harper said. "In years of teaching I've learned you have to engage your students. You can't just give them work and put them to seed. This helps put a tangible item to a subject.
McDougle's course also is helping the teachers that signed up for it expand their own skills.
"I have to change the whole way I do things," Yoakum said. "But kids have different learning styles, so I have to be flexible."
