10 Ideas To Get Your Class Outdoors

1. Think Walk - pose a “big idea” question for students to consider while you lead them on a 10 minute walk. 10 minutes of movement and a change of context will lead to a richer discussion and better retention. After the walk ask the students to work in triads to develop a common answer to the initial question to share with the class.
2. Observation Challenge - lead students on a 10 minute walk outside. Notice 5-10 details while you walk. Challenge the students to pay attention to their surrounding while they walk. When you return to class pose questions based on the details observed during the walk (e.g. “How many people were sitting on the grass by the track?” / “What colour was the car parked beside the door we exited?” / “What kinds of flowers were growing in the garden we walked past?”) -- Useful activity for poetry study or narrative writing.
3. Inside Circle / Outside Circle - move the class outside and form two concentric standing circles. The members of the inner circle face the members of the outer circle. Provide a big idea prompt to the inner circle students (e.g. - “justify your choice for the most interesting text we’ve read in class this year” / “explain which character from a text you’ve read this year would be the most interesting to meet” / “explain why a sequel should be developed for one of the texts that we’ve read this year”). Rotate the outer circle two places and repeat with the member of the outer circle speaking. Repeat a few times. Great review or consolidation activity. Alternative context helps with retention. Standing promotes focus.
4. Character Walk - ask the students to choose one of the characters from a text they’re reading. Lead students on a short walk. Challenge the students to walk in trios and to adopt the traits of their chosen character and to have a conversation in character while they walk. Give the trios a minute to brainstorm a topic for their conversation before you leave. When you return ask the students to report on how they used word choice, body language and specific ideas to bring their characters to life.
5. Context Circle - move the class outdoors for a circle on the grass. Set the context for the lesson or activate students' prior knowledge with a prompt (e.g. - what’s something you already know about…”). The alternate context and circle can improve focus and give all students a voice.
6. Writing Instructions / Procedures - select a few specific destinations on the school grounds. In small groups challenge the students to develop very specific language to direct a person to their assigned destination -- with the one complication that they can only direct movement not describe the destination (e.g. - “Walk to the west end of the hallway and turn left…” NOT “If you’re standing under the goal posts you’re in the right place”). Have the groups trade instructions and see if they can successfully follow the other group's instructions.
7. Artifact Circle - ask students to bring artifacts from home (nothing valuable) that connect to a text that has been studied in class this year. Sitting on the grass in small circles of 6-8 ask the students to pass around the artifacts and make connections to the texts read in class. The student who provided the artifact goes last to explain the connection he/she intended the artifact to represent. Challenge the students to extend their understanding by making deeper connections to their texts and speculating how characters in their texts might participate in this experience.
8. Photo Hunt - lead students on a walk. During the walk, challenge the students to find or stage a photo that connects to a text that you’ve read / viewed in class. When you return to class jigsaw the class and have students share / explain their images.
9. Exam Prediction Brainstorm - lead the students on a walk. While walking ask the students to brainstorm a question that “should” appear on the final exam about one of the texts being studied in class. Prior to the walk co-create the criteria that you would use to describe an appropriate exam question. After the walk jigsaw a sharing of the questions.
10. Be Miserable - on a lousy weather day take students outside (briefly?). When you return to class ask the students to individually write a reflection or hold a whole class circle discussion about how the weather affects them. Make connections to the use of setting in a text or brainstorm ideas of how to overcome negative feelings about the weather and discuss how these strategies could have been used by a character in a text studied in class.

Photos of Playgrounds - Inference / Research / Critical Thinking Activities

These and more stunning photos of school playgrounds from around the world can be found here: Jamesmollison.com. Additional background on the project by photographer James Mollison and his book, Playgrounds can found found in this post by Slate.com  photo blogger Jordan G. Teicher: Slate Photo Blog interview.

Affiliated Primary School of South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China

Aida Boys School, Bethlehem, West Bank

The images are a great opportunity for students to apply their inference, research or critical thinking skills.  A few ideas:

1. Inference: examine the details of one of the images closely. What could you infer from specific elements in the photograph about the school and home lives of the students pictured?  Here's an assignment page for this activity: A Day in the Life.
2. Research: choose one of the images to focus on and research the daily life of the life of a student in the community presented in the photo. Here's an assignment page for this activity.
3. Critical Thinking: imagine a character from one of the texts we've studied in class emigrated to one of the communities pictured in the collection of school playgrounds. Making specific references to details in the photograph and details in the text determine how challenging or comforting the character might find his/her new community? Here's an assignment page for this activity.

Critical Literacy - Rethinking What We Know

Globe and Mail writer, Doug Saunder’s article “The real reasons why migrants risk everything for a new life elsewhere” is a great challenging read for senior students. It addresses stereotypes, requires critical thinking about the voices not heard in most news reporting and encourages further curiosity and research.

I find students respond really well to ideas that challenge conventional wisdom. This article encourages its readers to rethink what they “know” about migrants from African nations trying to reach Europe.  This Google Docs version of the article includes some response / analysis prompts: close reading task.

Paper Towns - By John Green

I've read three of John Green's books now. Rather than worry that I have the literary tastes of an adolescent girl, I've decided that they're a connection to my daughter who's growing up so fast. They're also an insight into the hopes and dreams and fears of my adolescent students. In Paper Towns Green tells a terrific story that feels very real as his characters peel away layers of identity that they have applied to themselves and to their friends.

Things I really liked about Paper Towns and why it belongs in English courses:

• There's a mystery. The plot works. The adventures feel genuine.
• There are great literary connections. Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" plays a central role in the novel. Holden Caufield doesn't appear, but an essay comparing him to central character Margo Ross Spiegelman is an obvious task. Canadians might draw contrasts to Hagar Shipley or even Susanna Moodie.
• John Green does so much work for teachers with his thoughtful FAQs. In discussing Paper Towns he provides rich content for book circles. He addresses the idea of the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl",  his relationship as an author with his readers and the importance of ambiguity in novels, and other authorial tidbits like this one:

Q. What titles did you consider before coming up with “Paper Towns”?
A. More Light Than Heat. I was really in love with that one for a long time. (Shakespeare)
Love Loves to Love Love. I thought that one was a hot slice of clever. (Joyce)
The Life and Hard Times of Margo Roth Spiegelman.
Chasing Margo. This ended up being the German title.
Margo Roth Spiegelman: An Incomplete Life 
etc.
They were all more pretentious than Paper Towns. I come up with like 1,000 titles, and then Sarah and Julie laugh at me for my pretentiousness and we try to settle on the least pretentious title. I don’t know how I ever got The Fault in Our Stars past their pretention detectors. 

• And lastly, there's a film coming out. That opens up all sorts of media analysis possibilities ranging from discussions of casting, to the changes in the plot, to responses to reviews, to analysis of the marketing.

The New World of Citizen Journalism

I had the opportunity to visit Mohawk College's Journalism program recently. It's very impressive.  I learned that the job of "reporter" has changed dramatically in the last 5-10 years. A reporter for a newspaper is no-longer primarily a writer. A reporter is expected to be a one person multimedia producing, cross-platform writing,  social networker. It's very exciting and the students at Mohawk were learning every aspect of the business. Which leads me, funnily enough, to the debate over vaccines. 

On  February 5th, The Toronto Star's front page cried out, "A Wonder Drug's Dark Side". What followed was a long story that as The Star's publisher was subsequently forced to admit, "led many readers to conclude The Star believed its investigation had uncovered a direct connection between a large variety of ailments and the vaccine". That quote is from the disclaimer that now appears on The Star's website where the article used to be found. The Star has "unpublished" the original story.

The flaws in the original story were laid out in an LA Times report on the controversy: "How A Major Newspaper Bungled A Vaccine Story and Then Smeared Its Critics".

In Our Classes

From an English class point of view this is rich material. 

1. What a great opportunity to discuss research and bias. This blog post by Dr. Jen Gunter -Autopsy of Toronto Star HPV article and the real dark side of Gardasil they missed -is a terrific example of a persuasive research based essay. It's a masterful example of effective organization and word choice. I especially like her title and its invitation to readers to discover the "real dark side".
2. The controversy is a terrific opportunity for students to examine the specific curriculum expectations of "critical literacy" and "production perspectives". Gunter's blog post highlights the need for readers to consider motivation and conflicts of interest when reading. This idea for a "Two Sides to the Story?" - research assignment uses the issue of "false balance" to teach the curriculum expectations of critical literacy and production perspectives.
3. Finally, back to the students at Mohawk College. This story is a fascinating example of the shift in power caused by the Internet. 10 years ago the front page story written by The Star's professional journalists might have been challenged by a few letters to the editor, perhaps The Star would have chosen to publish this rebuttal - "Science shows HPV vaccine has no dark side" -by Canadian scientists. But the debate would have happened entirely within the newspaper and would have been controlled by the newspaper.  As the publisher's very defensive retraction proves, The Star does not back down easily. Today, the Internet provides a platform that democratizes voices. This story is a great opportunity to challenge students to consider these curriculum based issues:
1. Confirmation bias;
2. How to corroborate sources;
3. Why we site sources in our research;
4. Language usage - is Dr. Gunter's critique of the language used in The Star's retraction fair?
5. "False Balance" in news reporting (as comically represented by John Oliver as it relates to Climate Change - warning PG-13 for language - start at 1:08 to avoid profanity).

Stream of Consciousness on Racism in Canada

Watching an old movie with my daughter led me down a stream of consciousness about race and culture and prejudice that reminded me of some texts that could be useful in the teaching of character analysis or persuasive writing.
I was watching the old John Grisham film A Time To Kill with my daughter. In the film, newly minted Klu Klux Klan followers plant a burning cross on the lawn of a lawyer defending a black man. My daughter asked a very sensible question, that I'd never processed before, she wondered how a burning cross became a symbol for white power.

This led to a Google search which led to a Wikipedia article and the uncomfortable discovery that the most recent example of a racist cross burning mentioned in Wikipedia happened in Nova Scotia in 2010.

That story reminded me of a terrific Radio Lab podcast about a young woman who rejected her family's imposed identity (her mother's birth certificate listed her as "negro") and adopted a new identity for herself as a white woman in a high school full of racial tension.
And finally, that story reminded me of a pair of articles from last month about racism in Winnipeg.
None of these texts are particularly uplifting, but all challenge us to confront our stereotypes and prejudices.

As part of an examination of the depiction of character traits or an analysis of the inner conflicts faced by characters in short stories or novels I wonder if these stories / articles might provide some interesting fodder for discussion.

Ally's Choice - Radio Lab podcast about racial divides in a family. The Radio Lab podcast challenges the scientific validity of the concept of race.

These two articles consider the reality of prejudice and injustice in Canada towards First Nations people: Winnipeg the Most Racist City in Canada and a rebuttal, Is Our City the Most Racist In Canada?

These could also be useful as part of a study of persuasive writing. Students could consider the reporters' attempts to create a convincing arguments to support ideas.

Goal Setting - "15 High Performance Habits"

We're past the "New Year's Resolution" time of the year, but isn't a new semester an equally appropriate time to offer students a chance to "reboot" their approach to school?  This article and activity is intended to foster those conversations:

Lesson Plan Idea & Article

"A New Semester - How Will You Make It Your Best One Ever?" -  http://goo.gl/HVqCtP the activity asks the students to read and reflect on the article:  "15 High Performance Habits That Will Make You Successful" - from Lifehack.org.