C4T #4

For this month's C4T I was assigned the blog At the Teacher's Desk. This blog is manned by a collaboration of teachers with the majority of the posts being made by Mr. William Chamberlain.

Interesting Student Observation About Peter Pan

In this post, Mr. Chamberlain talks about how his class had been discussing the 2003 movie version of Peter Pan. During this discussion he asked his students while Mr. Darling and Captain Hook are always played by the same actor. One of his students came up with the observation that because Mrs. Darling had given her secret kiss to Peter Pan, that he would naturally make Mr. Darling the villain of Neverland. Mr. Chamberlain then asserts that this is why sharing long term projects is so worthwhile, because it allows students to revisit the information and come to new and exciting conclusions. 

I love the idea of this project! It combines literature and film studies. In a day and age where most students would rather watch the movie, this project is invaluable. It helps assess the details of both the novel and different versions of films and why they are important to the meaning of the individual piece and the story as a  whole. I also, like the idea of having a long term class project with large worldwide audience because it allows the students to not only make their own observations and draw their own conclusions, but to feed off the observations and conclusions of those involved. 

Mr C, What Is A Real World Scenario?

In this post, Mr. Chamberlain describes an interesting he was asked by one of his students; what is a real world scenario? In order to answer this question, he completely revamped his math lesson in a way that allowed his students to figure it out in a hands-on manner. You see, Mr. Chamberlain wanted to go to a series of baseball games. He gave his students the dates of the games and specific criteria to figure out what would be the cost for him to go on this trip. What he noticed upon giving this assignment was that his students were really engaged and seemed to enjoy the project immensely. They liked it so much that they did a subsequent project focusing on a trip to a destination of their choosing.

I really like how Mr. Chamberlain engaged his students in hands-on learning and that he did it in such a unique way. Instead of solving irrelevant problems out of a textbook, the student got to use their problem-solving skills and apply them to a real situation. Now if only I can figure out a way to do this for English.......

Side Note
At the Teacher's Desk is no longer a working blog. Mr. Chamberlain has moved all the old posts and will continue putting new ones on his blog #WmChamberlain.