Fourth Week of School - Tuesday, September 22, 2009

We had an interesting literature activity today, and apparently it was one that Mr. M thought up rather spontaneously (he does that a lot, which I like). He found an article on a really cool website (www.izzit.org) which has a "current events" section. There you can find daily stories of newsworthy interest. He chose one having to do with baby seals, and how residents on a Hawaiian island have been treating the seals as humans, often with harmful effects. Following the article, there are a series of activities/questions for the students to answer. He had the whole class read the article, and then broke them into five groups to tackle the activities/questions, such as vocabulary, reading comprehension, but most interestingly (to me anyway) are the group discussion activities, which requires the kids to go beyond the text, and to formulate solutions or speculations based on the reading. Each group presented their response to one of these types of questions, and I was really impressed with the imaginativeness and creativity that went into their responses. Even though it was an activity outside of assigned texts or readings, it reminded me how flexible and adaptable a teacher has to be, and not relying on cookie-cutter methodology or techniques in order to teach something worthwhile.