Tuesday 28 April 2009

teaching tip

Make your students do Show and Tell. Seriously. It is the best thing ever.

7 comments:

Ampersand Duck said...

Oh you tease -- more details please!

librarygirl said...

Do they talk about what they did on the weekend?

...or what they are currently reading?

Elsewhere007 said...

And then get them to write about it...

lucy tartan said...

They bring in something, 'a text', which interestingly the Youth of Today appear not so readily to interpret in the broad postmodern sense) that's related to / embodies the themes of the subject. So far this semester we have had novels and films, a football, a child's story book, folk songs (sung!), a Pro Hart painting, a barbed wire straining tool, and a yarn-spinning trophy won by the show & teller at a muster on the weekend.

Ann ODyne said...

PRIMARY School S&T is far more sadistic than any tertiary variety.

I dug up a very old cast-iron fencewire-strainer the other day. I thought it would confound on The Collectors.

Can we have a transcript of the winning Yarn? Was it a Ute Muster?
I love regional sub-cultures!

betty said...

Tried it with Year 7 sudents once. First up was a girl whose mother had had sex aids party (like tupperware, but with sex aids)

Quite a lot remained unsold, so Penny brought them in and demonstrated.

It set a high standard, and the experiment was terminated after three weeks - a man in a barrel toy, and when you lifted the barrel a giant penis popped out.

dogpossum said...

S&T is an awesome idea.
I like to start each class with students telling us about the media they've 'consumed' this week - ie what are they watching on telly,listening to on the radio, reading on the interwebs, games theyr'e playing, etc etc etc. They usually start the semester with fairly straight 'descriptions'. As the semester continues, they get more critical - it's interesting to see them apply the theory from the course (I teach media/cultural studies) to their own consumption. Because it's casual chat in class, the other students join in and people generally don't feel intimidated.

But actually bringing in stuff is a really neat idea - it'd be great to get them to talk about particular websites or demonstrate games or bring in magazines, etc.