Expected, Inspected, & Respected.
"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice." Anton Chekhov
At Strathcona this year, I started a LEGO Club with two of my fellow teacher candidates for the students to enjoy. Here's how we spread the word to generate excitement about the upcoming opportunity (not that we needed much more than to say, "Come play with LEGO!") Strathcona puts a great deal of emphasis on the visual arts and we thought our club would fit in very well with the school's creative, hands-on approach. LEGO Club was given a shelf in the library to display the student creations and it went a long way to having the students take pride in what they built. I had enough LEGO in my personal collection for the school to use but the administration offered to buy a bunch of LEGO for the club as well. We were practically swimming in the stuff. We decided that my LEGO would be used on the foam mats for free play, while the school's LEGO would be used at the tables for theme builds and design challenges. Initially, we forgot to include a rule about a strict separation of table LEGO and mat LEGO but we un-mixed the LEGO and fixed the rules by the second week. Here are some of the challenges we presented at LEGO Club: Another rule we failed to include at first was a rule about finishing your lunch and making sure to clean it up before you go play with LEGO. Once the rules addressed this issue, a few reminders was all it took to keep the library clean. The most difficult part of LEGO Club was getting the children to put away the LEGO at the end of lunch hour. Even after several warnings that the time to clean up was coming soon, many children would just continue to build, #awesomeproblems. I think we need a big blanket or a tarp so that we can grab the four corners when the time is up, get the children off of it, and then tie it up like a big sack. Like a bigger version of this: On the first day of LEGO Club, after introducing ourselves, welcoming the students, and telling them how excited we were, I said that we needed to go over a few rules before we got started, to make sure everything was fair and we could all have a great time. Then I said, "The first rule of LEGO Club, is you do not talk about LEGO Club." I learned that elementary age kids really don't get references to R rated movies from almost 20 years ago. The adults in the room loved it though. Overall, LEGO Club was a huge success and I'd definitely do this again.
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![]() Yesterday's social studies lesson was a big win. It wasn't perfect but I felt I provided the kind of experience the kids will really remember. I started the lesson by showing the class a picture of Lagimodiere's sash, or ceinture flechee (which I called a ceinture flechette, imperfection #1), and had the students guess what it was. Since we had read The Red Sash the day before, many of the students knew what it was. Then, I had them get in groups of two or three and asked them to come up with as many ways a voyageur might use it as they could think of. They came up with a lot of alternatives such as a tie for a capote, a back support, a washcloth, towel, or rope. They even came up with a couple of ideas I hadn't thought of. Then I told them about a few more things the voyageurs may have used the sash for, such as preventing hernias, emergency sewing kit, and tumpline. Of course, no one had ever heard of a tumpline, so I brought in a Duluth pack to show them. Inside the pack was a a 45 lb plate, a giant stuffed bear (to keep the plate from moving around), and some beaver fur. It was a hassle bringing it on the bus but it was totally worth it - just look at that face! Well, trust me, they loved it. Earlier in the day, I started reading them a novel called The Broken Blade about a 13 year old boy who spends the summer working as a voyageur. The main character discusses being nervous about being able to carry the 180 pounds that voyageurs regularly carried over rough terrain on portages. Being able to feel 1/4 of that weight on their backs was an eye opening experience for the class. The effort I made carrying that heavy and enormous pack on public transit was well worth the effort. I had thought that the class would need something to do while they were taking turns carrying the pack around the room, so I prepared some voyageur themed math questions for them. This was completely unnecessary because I hadn't anticipated what a great spectator sport this would be. 1) Lagimodiere travelled west from Trois Rivieres in Quebec in the year 1800. How long ago was that? One thing that went wrong was that I didn't manage my time as well as I could have and ran out of time for a concluding reflection to the lesson. As a result, the kids were still really amped up when it was time to go to music class. I'm not sure the music teacher will ever forgive me.
This is a unit plan that my teaching partner and I wrote for our Grade 5 practicum.
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David Wiebe
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