The+Event


 * Background:**

I will be teaching at Stromlo High School. One of the classes I will be taking is year 7 SOSE: Ancient Chinese Civilisations. This school is a public school which focuses on middle schooling with programs from year 6-10. The majority of the students in this class are from the same area/region as the school and there is a strong focus on community. There is a diverse range of students from various multicultural backgrounds and appear to mostly from middle class families. Throughout the school and in this particular year 7 SOSE class there are students who are dealing with very difficult and troubled home lives. I will be teaching for the duration of four weeks at the beginning of term 2. This indicates that many of these students will still be adapting to the new ways of high-school. Their understanding of Ancient China is minimal however they have recently finished a unit of study on Ancient Egypt and as such should be familiar with the exploration of an ancient civilisation and comparing it to our present context. As such I have planned my unit of work as an introduction to the Ancient Chinese Civilisations. Throughout the lessons I will draw upon previous skills demonstrated in first term when completing activities and further engage students with critical thinking skills.

Two class teaching episode.

The Year 7 SOSE class were studying Ancient Civilisations. As part of the National Curriculum I was teaching them about Ancient China. Two weeks into the unit I set a 'discoveries' lesson focusing on some of the major inventions and technological breakthroughs that changed the world. We focused on the invention of paper and its influence (The idea of books, printing and record keeping). We looked at how the people of ancient China made paper and compared it to the way paper is made in todays society. The class were sitting in table groups and for the creative task we attempted to make paper. i gave each group a container (all same measurements) of soft dirt, leaves, sticks, a pile of newspaper and water. I had decided recycling paper would be an easy alteration to help the students have a successful product at the end. This also made the process quicker which helped time constraints.

Each group then decided how much of the 'ingredients' they should mix in their bucket ie. How much dirt to water ratio?? or should we use all the leaves or only some? If we use leaves should we scrunch them up? What parts of paper should we use and how small do we tear or cut the pieces. Once the group had made their mixture, after looking at other groups mixtures and comparing the difference discussing whether they thought this would work or not, the took their mix to a bucket where they had a wooden frame with mesh tightly nailed to its border. The students then poured the mixture into the mesh strainer over the bucket and then using other pieces of wood, flattened and pushed the mixture into a flat tightly packed shape (size depended on how much mixture was made to acoomodate the A4 shaped frame). Then all racks were placed and left to dry while other work was completed.

The mixtures looked entirely different. Some had a blue/grey tinge pthers were a dark muddy brown all depending on how they made their mixture. After doing this many students were sceptical about how it would dry or turn out.

Next lesson once the mixtures had dried we looked at the six groups and how their paper turned out. Many were not strong enough and flaked and crumbled while others worked really well and resembled a thick piece of cardboard in slightly different colours. The students were shocked by how groups mixtures had worked and bonded together while the rest had been not as successful. As a class we discussed why some worked better than others and talked through the different process groups used. One student raised the whole point... "We used real paper to make recycled paper and barely succeeded, the fact that people in Ancient China could make lots of paper to make books and so that you could actually write on it and it was flat and neat with ONLY natural materials is amazing" The class then erupted with excitment! Yes how did they do it?? It would have taken a long time to figure out the pefect mixture! How did they think of this process? and how did they do it on such a large scale? why did they think of it but other civilisations didn't?? The questions and excitment buzz continued and then after adequate class discussion we did the three minuite writing exercise which asked them to write about what they had leanrt or a thought about the Ancient Chinese and their paper making discovery.

Then came the after thoughts, 'but now we are trying to use less paper' and reduce the amount of paper we use... we are trying harder to recycle paper (one piece of paper can be recycled up to 7 times!) And they were then able to compare and contrast todays society and the use of paper from the ancient chinese civilisation. One conclusion drawn was...

We are now moving toward a paperless society but in order to get there we first had to invent paper to write down ideas to invent technologies to replace it!

Thorough content sparked from the national curriculum, integrated with reading instructions writing ideas and thoughts and a creative task using hands, measuring and recording quantaties of ingredients, seeing successful and unsuccessful results, the ablity to work independantly and as part of a group, questioning and reasoning and drawing conclusions to the real world, their world relevent to them right now.

This used the multiple intelligences a range of disciplinary literacy and was above all FUN!!! A real event where I thought to myself WOW, I get this whole teaching thing!!!

Nilsson - Focusing on this event help us to question our practice more deeply and, through such reflection, gain new insights into teaching as being problematic. This is achieved by the method of pedagogical reasoning cycle.
 * Why is this an appropriate event?**

Hammerness - It helps us to see through a constructive lens. The event is also an explanation of teaching practice because it helps us to understand students and their learning.