A room with a view
About 40, tie, expensive coat, shoulder bag, reading freebee newspaper...I liked this idea, which came from DevelopingTeachers.com's March newsletter, in which Hall Houston describes some of the ideas in his new book The Creative Classroom (Lynx Publishing).
Take your students to the window of your classroom. Tell the class to choose a person outside and describe him or her briefly (you probably don't want them to stare). Now, everyone sits down and writes a paragraph about the topic from the person's perspective.You might suggest a few ideas to them to get them going -- what is the person's name, age, etc; where are they going, what are they thinking etc.
Possibly you might use a digital camera to take pictures and use these and the paragraphs to decorate the classroom walls.
And of course if you had a blog you could publish them there (see also "comments"...)
The newsletter is well worth subscribing to.
Labels: Project work
posted by Tom at 8:40 AM
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4 Comments:
People standing still are going to be easier than anyone walking, as they give you longer to make up a story about them. You could have people in pairs describing the person orally, and making notes.
If you are going to use a digital camera, I'd say you want the pictures to be taken from far enough away for the person NOT to be recognisable, especially if you are going to publish them on a blog (it's a question of invasion of privacy).
My example was taken from two floors up, which meant the camera angle hides the person's identity somewhat, and makes it harder for them to punch me out for taking pictures... -)!
I was just doing a search for mentions of my book, and your blog entry came up. I'm glad you liked the idea. Tom's comments are very insightful.
Hall Houston
Hi Hall!
I liked the idea -- and I also liked the idea of a book about the "creative" classroom.
A lot of what you find in coursebooks requires people merely to answer, not to create.
But where's the fun in merely answering...?
I agree with your statement about coursebooks. If you are interested in seeing more of my work, there are links to some of my articles (including previews of my book) here:
www.hallhouston.com/articles.htm
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