Project One

So not wanting to waste anytime thinking too much I asked the boys to fish out of their bags their school books. Geography landed on the desk first and we looked to recent work ... on migration. We established prior learing and I asked them how could they develop an interesting resource on Migration.

We decided on the outcome:  A short animation that would explain reasons for migration. They decided the following key elements should be addressed:
What is migration?
What factors effect migration - ie push and pull factors.

What will they come up with? We have set a 2 period limit so that means 1 hour 40 mins to create the animation.... creative and productive use of time then...

A blog

The boys have been told that they need to keep a working blog throughout the project. After a couple of minutes spent registering they are well away adding pictures and comments! To follow their progress as well as mine see the links below:

Adam : http://adamtcreative.blogspot.com/
Liam L : http://liamlcreative.blogspot.com/
Liam G: http://liamcreative.blogspot.com/
James: http://muskettcreative.blogspot.com/

First things first...

Its 11am on 21 May 2010 and I am in a classroom with 4 volunteers from year 9 who want to make learning more intertesting. For them and their teachers they soon assure me. Liam, James, Adam and Liam immediately sit themselves behind desks, contrained by the usual classroom practice, and inform me that the other volunteer, Aiden is not coming due to illness. Hopefully he can join us soon. In the meantime its the 5 of us, a whiteboard, pens and our creativity at the ready!

The first task we have to do is establish what makes a good lesson. The boys assure me that a good lesson should be all of these things:

Interesting
Interactive
Diverse - there should be a range of learning styles within the lesson and from lesson to lesson
Easy to follow the tasks
Enjoyable for pupils and teachers
In each lesson they should learn something new.
There should also be opportunities for positive feedback from teachers.

First and foremost apparently a good lesson requires a good teacher...