Odblog: January 2012

Fairtrade Facebooking. A tired and late entry for #pedagoofriday

When you teach rotations in the lower year groups, its sometimes hard to surprise students (their pals have told them what you cover and how they'll do it). It's even harder maintaining teacher motivation if, for example, you have 3 second year classes and are teaching the same lesson for the 6th time. This was a dilemma when we swapped rotations at Christmas and I found myself teaching fairtrade again in quick succession on Friday past. Instead of following a lesson looking at its impact on individuals through character case studies, I asked the class to create their own characters. We were able to start this via a rather excellent show and tell from a couple of the girls in the class which started to give us an idea of the location of fairtrade producers, the likely demographic, what they might be producing and how they benefit. We mapped some of this in the centre of the class and I then distributed mock Facebook profiles found on Tony Cassidy's ever useful http://www.radicalgeography.co.uk . I listed the criteria on the board (see the image above) and, in twenty minutes, the class created some really nice summaries of typical fairtrade producers and its positive impact. I've shared some examples, which I meant to include in #pedagoofriday but a Burns Supper and general fatigue at the weekend put paid to that. If I had ict access, it would have been nice to make these look more professional or use Russel Tarr's Fakebook as originally intended but, in the time we had, I thought this was a nice productive use of it.

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Cities of the future

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I had a bit of space with one class to experiment a little today. I thought it was a good opportunity to share this http://www.glasgowcityvision.com/ . I had already summarised the main desires of this vision last night and thought it would be a great opportunity for some geography in the news. We started the period with a rolling Flickr slideshow of Glasgow images and discussed the likelihood that as the students became more independently mobile and their own needs and tastes changed that the nearest big city would become more important in their lives. Indeed, some would probably end up as residents. As this was their future and not mine, I asked them to imagine their ideal city of the future, specific to Glasgow. At this point, I showed an image of Coruscant from the Star Wars films. We tried to link as closely to the themes in the vision document as possible, for example, making more use of the River Clyde, promoting healthier lifestyles, creativity in the use of space and sustainable development. I employed a 'runner' to bring developed ideas on sticky notes to place on the board and told the class we would try to create our own survey return from these. The results were fantastic and the enthusiasm with which the students approached this, particularly as this was last period in the day, was outstanding. The pictures offer only a snapshot of a rich range of suggestions. A very simple lesson, introduced by the teacher but driven by the students.

Posted via email from Mr O'D's class posterous