Stories from the classroom:
Starting a lesson on primary and secondary sources last week, I decided to make sure that they knew what the very basic concept of a source was. "What is a source?" I asked my dear sweet Year 7s. One boy's hand shot straight up. "It is a kind of topping that you put on sandwiches" he announced proudly. I didn't know what to say. Usually I know what to say when a kiddo throws me a curve ball like that, but I really had no idea how to respond. "Um, source?" I hesitate. "Ya, "soace" he responds. That's when I, and a few other students in the rest of the class realized, that Aussies say sauce and source pretty darn near identically. We had a good laugh about it and my students prodded me into trying to say it their way (which I couldn't properly), and we continued on with our lesson. Today, I really struggled with what to teach my Year 10s in Coastal Management. I needed to go over erosion and the role erosion plays on coastal landforms. What has been especially difficult prepping for this class is that there are no engaging classroom activity lesson plans online, and only textbooks and powerpoints available via the department. I knew these kids would hate me for throwing a powerpoint and textbook at them for 5th period (the last period of the day) so I decided to try a couple new activities (I don't know why I always do my big experiments with them.. but I do!) With the first one, for the concept of corrasion, I had them wad up paper into balls. First I had them throw the balls of paper at each other (because that's what I knew they really wanted to do). After a 30 second paper fight in the classroom I had them recollect their paper balls. I told them that they needed to pretend that they were a wave, just like we did in the last lesson. That when I said go, they would throw their paper balls at the front wall of the classroom as if it was the coast. I said "go", they threw, and I suddenly had all the paper in the whole classroom in my control! Perfect! After explaining to them about how those balls of 'sand' eat away at the coast, I told them about how when I was in Czechoslovakia a few months after the Velvet Revolution. I went to a place where protesting young people had been cornered in a cemented corridor and shot. I tried to paint a picture of what the wall looked like where the stray bullets hit the cement wall and chipped away at it. That is corrasion. I then started the next section of the lesson which was to create clay models of the coast and the impact of erosion on the coast. That's when something I didn't expect happened. I passed out the clay and....What do you think happened? What do think you might get when you give 10th grade boys a bunch of clay (I only had about 3 girls in the whole class of 22 - some students were absent). Yep. There were clay penises hitting desks. There were clay penises on top of the bills of hats. One boy tried to put a big orange clay penis down his pants. I had another boy pretending to give oral sex to a yellow clay penis. This, of course was not all at once (I know your imagination must be just running at it's max now). No, it was over the course of about a half hour, as I walked them through how a coast becomes a headland, and then a wave-cut notch becomes a cave, and a cave into an arch..... and so on. .... As I'd introduce another vocabulary word, I'd look over and find a penis quietly being formed on another student's desk in the guise of a coastal landform. To be honest, if you look past the penis stuff, it was a really successful lesson. Kids were engaged. And they were actually building arches and other geographic landforms through their desk-top penises. I don't know..... This is a really really rough class that is hard to engage. One part of me says that this whole thing was really inappropriate. I would never have been quite this flexible in Alaska (besides, the Alaskan girls in the class would have totally chided the boys into respectable behavior.) Another part says that it was a great opportunity to teach them the vocabulary word "phallic" (though I know it isn't necessarily a coastal management vocab word) and to have them actively engaged in creating coastal landforms (which most of them did.) In then end, they had to write a paragraph, using all the vocab words we had learned and modeled (except phallic... I didn't make them include that one) and I had 98% participation. Only one kiddo didn't write, and he drifted towards me casually while everyone else was writing to let me know that he didn't understand what he needed to do. I had him just explain to me how all the landforms were made as a result of erosion. I wish I could walk away from the lesson feeling great. Unfortunately, one student, right at the end said something that just shot me down in one stroke. It was something that just simply hurt my feelings - especially after how hard I worked to have an engaging lesson.. I won't get into details here because they aren't important. I just know that these kids are... kids... and they have a lot to learn. One final note that I have before I end this blog is about Olin and Alta and our neighborhood. Do you remember in the Wizard of Oz just after Dorothy's house stops crashing about in that tornado? She comes out from a world of black and white into a world of color. (No, that isn't my teaching experience here quite yet... but I'm working on it.) After a bit of walking around this new land (Munchkin Land), devoid of any creatures, there slowly appears little people. They peek out over flower blooms. The peer around tree trunks. Little people in a land that once seemed to have no one. Our street - Mooramba Ave - is Munchkin Land. When we first came here, there was only one little girl that lived across the street who the kids only could see through the window.... a world away. She never came outside. My kids were lonely and the street was quiet. Two months later our street is ripe with the sound of scooter wheels, skateboard jumps, laughing kids, and parents yelling out "5 more minutes." And you know what? These other kids have been all living together for months and years on the same street not knowing that each other were around. It wasn't until Olin and Alta showed up, started knocking and doors, and were always visible did they start coming out from behind their 'flowers.' So far we have Marley and Aaron (both boys age 9), Niko (boy age 5) and Ruby (girl age 6) just right here on our little street! Over time we may find there are even more. So are the reflections of my day. I have some more things to write about last weekend, but I'll save them for the next post. Walk to work Tally: 139 Miles
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AuthorThe Liljemark's enjoy exploring the world. This blog chronicles our adventures. Archives
December 2017
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