cartoon

Getting ALL your students to participate in class

/ AlftheRed / 2 Comments

Its’ not so difficult, believe me!

The trick is to make it easy, both for them and for you, to visually check whether each student has participated or not. I use a very simple method: paper cards that are green on one side, and red on the other. Every time a student asks a question or adds a (somewhat substantial) comment, they get to turn their card from red to green.

It’s all explained in this little video:

By the end of class, you can see with just a glimpse which students still have red cards on their desks. If you have a “participation grade”, it will take you no more than a minute to pen down which students got their points, and which didn’t. (That is, when you’ve learned all their names. At the beginning of a course it may take a bit longer.)

The neat thing is that students immediately know whether they are getting their points or not, and will make an extra effort – I normally get about 80% of the students to participate in one form or another without prompting. Which makes it also easier to pay attention to the students that find it more difficult to participate, and to help them out.

This system also helps you to avoid a student “hogging” the discussion without being curt to them: if a student is raising their hand for the tenth time (it’s a good problem; I love those students!) you can simply say, “Let’s hear from the red cards first.” A very easy way to open the discussion.

Let me know if this was any help!

AML

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Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971)

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Minimum Age: None Maximum Age: 9-10 Categories: High Adventure;
Disney Classics
Test drive: Takes a while to pick up speed, so your kids will need to be patient with it. Once you get to the fantastic Animal Soccer scene, however, it’s more than worth the wait!

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

As a child, one of the most popular Super-8 shorts they’d show at birthday parties was the Jungle Soccer Match, in which the various animals in both teams displayed their abilities while running over and over the unlucky human designated to referee. It was a short masterpiece of animation, that brilliantly incorporated some live-action actors (including the unfortunate ref.) We’d never get tired of it!

So imagine my surprise when I discovered, on a rerun of Bedknobs and Broomsticks, that there was a High Adventure context to this little story! The human characters, guided by a benevolent but inexperienced witch (Angela Lansbury) are trying to save Great Britain from an upcoming German invasion. To do so, they must travel to magical places in order to recover an artifact that will let them conjure the spirits of old warriors to come in their aid.

The movie is not the timeless masterpiece that Mary Poppins is: it takes a while to pick up the pace, and even then still moves slowly for present day standards. But if you and your children can withstand the slow buildup, you’ll be rewarded with such classic scenes as “Portobello Road” (now I can’t eat a portobello sandwich without humming it!), dancing under the sea, Germans vs. Knights, and of course, the inimitable Jungle Soccer Match.

And beyond the individual scenes, the movie still inspires, better than many more recent ones, the feeling that-below the surface, yet not too deep-magical things could happen at any time.

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Avatar: The Last Airbender

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Minimum Age: 7 (Okay, maybe 6) Maximum Age: None Categories: High Adventure;
Recent Good Stuff
Test drive: It became the favorite show of both my 6-year-old boy and my 8-year-old girl, who continued watching it over and over, for many years since.
When my wife and I began watching it, it became the show we’d all watch together every evening.

Avatar coverIf you haven’t watched this one, you should definitely begin here!

How good is it? Don’t let the fact that this is an animated series put you off: This show has better writing than most live-action series, and it is possibly the best-written show that’s ever been done in the fantasy genre.

Just how good is it? Do you have a family member who cares only so much for fantasy, and not at all for cartoons? Well, that would be my wife, and she made me promise not to watch too many episodes ahead.

Which was hard, I tell you, because the story draws you in. This is neither one of those shows in which every episode is like the rest, but a three-season story in which characters develop, allies are won and lost, and cities and countries fall to the war. The animation is extremely beautiful, each elemental type of magic based on actual kung-fu styles. The humor is spot-on, with visual gags that will have the young ones rolling on the floor, and clever jokes on the genre itself, which will stay with you for a long time. (The song “Secret Tunnel!” appearing early in the second season, became a family joke for months! I think my kids asked me to stop.)

In short, I can’t recommend this show enough without becoming a bore.  The one bad thing about it is that it ends. How dare they!

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(P.S.: Just make sure you don’t confuse it with the very disappointing live-action movie by M. Night Shyamalan. If you want to see how bad it is, follow this link to Honest Trailers. Nuff’ said…)