W is for Warmups - Why?
Blog 1 (of 3): Warming-Up Your Learners – Why?
Here’s a way to align with the brain’s start-up processes!
It is rare that participants come in ready to learn.
Many trainers believe it is because participants are distracted. While the trainers are prepared to start, they watch participants come in focused on their life - what they were just doing, what they should be doing, how to approach a life issue. Even if not focused elsewhere, they are mentally streaming into the learning space, looking around the room at who is here or not here, how the room is set up, where they will sit, wondering whether this will even be helpful to them.
Based on this belief, you might have developed a strategy to launch as soon as possible into your most important ideas so that this compels their attention.
The learning brain has a start-up process
Rather than simple distraction, in fact, the brain is doing some critical things to get ready to learn. The brain scans the environment to determine if the situation is safe; it activates correct energy level for learning, and it finds the stored information relevant to the topic.
The learning brains need significant & specific preparation to get ready for new ideas. If you start too soon, they may not catch up.
Assisting brains to learn is as important as providing relevant and effective new ideas.
Before accepting and integrating new, even terrific, ideas, the brain must go through significant processes:
Wake-up to the appropriate energy level
Check the safety of the learning situation
Initiate appropriate emotions
Determine significant areas of stored information and experience that resonate with the new content
Activate the higher capacities of the mind.
Whether you plan for it or not, the brain will go through its startup process. And, it may be initiating start-up while you are sending your first important idea.
WarmUps are a way you support this work and keep participants with you.
How WarmUps align and support this Start-up process
A WarmUp is a less-than-5-minute participant centered activity that supports the brain’s start-up process and readies every participant for the next piece of learning. It focuses participant energy and intention so that the new content has the best chance for being fully integrated.
WarmUps are brief interactions that help learning brains align for success. When you do an effective WarmUp, you wake up the reticular activating system in your participants, and change each brain’s frequency pattern to one that is conducive to learning.
A relevant WarmUp evokes attention, curiosity, and interest in learning, and full spectrum contributions.
Examples of WarmUps
An example of a short social WarmUp: “As a way of introducing yourself, use the first letter in your name and come up with a word that describes you in a positive way”. This helps participants remember each other’s names and associate them with a positive characteristic. This increases the sense of safety supportive of learning
An example of a short topical WarmUp: When learning about a stage of group development where participants begin to identify and use individual differences, participants are asked to focus on what is different about themselves, and how that influences how they act in groups and what they contribute – why this difference is valuable, why it might be challenging. This helps participants begin to value and use theirs and others’ differences and to begin to bring more of themselves, their thoughts, their opinions, their ideas, into the workshop.
A WarmUp is an investment in the rest of the training
Even when the brain is attending, as it hears key ideas, the brain will search for what it knows about the idea, and what it has experienced before. So, a thoughtful presentation with time to digest the ideas helps participant neural circuits flow easily. And WarmUps - as key transition points of brief participant engagement before and between ideas - align participants with the learning.
This investment in preliminary preparation at the beginning, and throughout, your training will be well-returned in readiness for significant ideas.
Last modified January 28, 2018