Dale's Cone and Learning Pyramid


Dales cone illustrates the learning effectiveness using different learning strategies. The strategies at the top of the cone are the least effective which are verbal lecturers, still visual images such as diagrams and flow charts and video and audio recordings. The learning experiences at the bottom of Dales cone are said to be the most effective. These learning experiences are more hands on and meaningful to students which is what I think teachers need to do but there is also the problem of funding, resources and the amount of time spent to plan and implement these experiences which could be why teachers fall back on learning experiences that have verbal and visual symbols.



The learning pyramid shows the average amount fo knowledge students retain from certain learning experiences. For example students will only retain about 5% from listening to a lecture, 10% from reading from a textbook or similar. Down the bottom of the pyramid students retain 75% by actully doing the skill and 90% by teaching others. This I would have to agree with just with my own experiences (Read previous posts).


For my up comming two week block at my prep classroom I am starting a unit which is based on the sea, and my learning manager plans for them to start locally and by the end of the year they will have reached the north pole in time for christmas. So I plan to start at the beach then move into local waters. I was thinking of using a large cardboard box for them to build a boat to go around the ocean in (hands on experience?) and bring in lots of resources they can look and touch and even use in their play. Would you think these would be classified as effective learning experiences according to Dales Cone and the learning pyramid? Comments please

1 comments:



Chloe's Learning Journey said...

Hi Kristine,

I think this activity sounds very 'hands on' and could be classified as an effective learning experience according to Dale's Cone and the learning pyramid. I like the way that you have inccorporated play based pedagogy into these learning experiences. Just an idea: Maybe you could incorporate a lot of negotiation into these learning experiences so that the children have a sense of ownership.

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