Demonstration Day at Bear Creek

One VP, and Five teachers from Bradford High came to see my brilliant Grade 12 students in action.

Our Learning Goal: Identify Main ideas in Media, and Print Texts/formulate ideas for an opinion piece.

We began with an article from the Globe and Mail which explained how the President of Australia gave the Aboriginal people an apology for the ethnic cleansing that took place from 1910-1970. The kids could relate the story to other stories of prejudice and racism. Was it the story that broke their cherub, deadpan faces, or the fact that I took their reading surveys into account and choice a real life story like many requested? Or was it my horrific, but emotional reaction to the story as I read? All of the juggling of teaching with passion came into play as the key for me was to give the kids a few minutes to talk to their table partners first, before I asked them to share their ideas with the group. This time I gave them time to stop, think, and share. This enriched the conversation and made everyone feel comfortable enough to get involved in the whole class conversation.

Next, students identified the kinds of text forms on their desk and they identified how they knew the forms where different. This let me know which text forms students knew and which ones students need more practice with.

Next, we moved right in to a whole class discussion using an anticipation guide that had some generalized statements about what makes good readers and writers. This activity reaffirmed that many of the myths around good readers and writers were being debunked: good readers and writers are created, developed, nurtured, and not born (that way). Even though I wasn't finished the anticipation guide, I could see the kids got the messages I was intending, so I skipped the last three statements and moved on to the Oprah Media text: Aids in Williamson 1987.

But before the video, I asked students (in their groups) to use the Venn-diagram and discuss the similarities and differences between identifying main ideas in a video and in a newsprint text. They had 5 minutes to discuss before they shared with the class.The video was a powerful 9 minutes that had the students captivated and razing their hands to comment on the text. I stopped the video at points to ask questions or to hear other students powerfully stating their opinions on the controversial text. After, students wrote down main ideas of the text, because they knew we were going to work on developing an opinion piece the next day.