- Field trip to Wastewater Facility and the comments that showed that students knew that what happened there was important and necessary for the health of the Fraser River, but at the same time quite gross and smelly.
- Field trip to the Lheidl T’Enneh exhibit -- I learned a lot from the tour, and I thought your questions going in were very solid. I very much appreciated how you enjoyed your time at the riverside.
- Friday Seminars -- great discussions and nice to get to know you better: shared quotes, discussions about music, leadership, special places, cool stuff and “findings” you came up with in response to the prompts
- Thoughtful responses to some of the blog prompts and TED talks,especially on environmental themes.
- Pretty good results for the 3 or 4 map and airphoto interpretation exercises -- these are difficult and most of you did quite well
- Field trip to UNBC -- I think many of you made great connections to university life (social and academic)
- Field trip to Ancient Forest and seeing how students reacted to the woods in different ways.
- Emphasis on Topophilia -- you had a variety of opportunities to write about places that have significant meaning to you and I saw that some of you kept pushing to really understand what made these spaces important, both in descriptive writing and in probing the “psychology” of place.
- Variety of reading and writing -- I was impressed with the books that many of you chose to read (or were already reading) and also the fine writing from a few of you who dedicated time to expressing your thoughts with polished writing on your digital portfolios.
- Into Thin Air -- might give this a pass next time around. This was highly recommended by other English teachers but I think only a few students were interested in the story. I do wish we had more choices when it comes to class sets of books in the bookroom. Also, I need to sort out how to make lit circles work better, and find other methods for students to share their independent reading.
- Flex time -- not in this format anyways... I think many of you were still not ready to use independent time for either open ended inquiry (your questions) or assigned tasks (my questions). This will be important for you to figure out before you do any post-secondary schooling.
- If you have suggestions for how I could make Lit Circles or Flex time work, please let me know.
- addition (after reading your comments): Less direct lectures on Geography and indirect assignments on English, and more direct lessons on English and integration of English into Geography themes and vice versa. There was a lot of "English" in our course, but maybe too much of it was assigned to Flex and therefore was skipped by those for who Flex did not work. I think this was a challenge for me because the Geography 12 outcomes are very specific (e.g. geomorphology) and require direct instruction whereas the English outcomes are more abstract and can be learned in a variety of direct and indirect ways. I knew exactly what Geography had to be included, but was more "dreamy" about the English side.
What did you take away from the "Language and Landscape Program?"
I thought the field trip to UNBC and the exploration place were cool. The course wasn't what I thought it was going to be though. It was definitely different than the way you sold it. I think it should be more half English half geography. We have 2 blocks so I figured that's how it would be split up but that wasn't the case. It was more 99% geography and a little bit of English here and there. It got exhausting after a while but I did enjoy bits and pieces of it.
ReplyDeleteFair enough... keep in mind you did a substantial amount of writing, tied in literary references to themes like Rivers, shared poetry in small group, were tasked with completing 5 independent novel studies, did a lit circle on a in-class novel, spent some time with poetry, explored dramatic writing, and wrote a short story for a final project. Look through the "Language" part of your marks update to see how these are reflected.
DeleteI learned many things from this course. The field trip to UNBC had to be my all time favorite field trip through out. A close second would have to be the field trip to the Exploration Place. I enjoyed the walk by the water and throwing rocks into the water, the scenery was gorgeous. I found the course different then what it should have been. I felt it was very one sided. It was mostly on Geography and barely any English. I was thinking it would anyways be one block geography and one block English. Now I'm going to be going into English 12 not knowing what I need to know. The one thing we really did for English was the poetry thing, and we did that for what, a few days? There were some things throughout the course I did like but I found it extremely one sided.
ReplyDelete-Maddi.
Thanks for the feedback. See the reply on the comment above... we did plenty of English even though it was often carried along by themes in Geography. You'll find you are quite ready for English 12 if you did well no the "Language" tasks in this course. Take a look at a sample English 12 exam on the provincial website and you will recognize some skills you developed in this class.
DeleteI thought that all the field trips were superb and I enjoyed having a lot of them. I learned a lot of things, and will be taking a lot away from this. And I felt that the geography part of the course was very strong and good but I also thought the English part could have played a bigger part in it.
ReplyDelete-Blake H.
Thanks for the comments... see the two comments and replies above for some thoughts on the "English" side
DeleteThis was a very interesting course for me. I learned a new outlook on our world, how to help fight my procrastination, and that putting in the effort has its rewards. On the negative side I had a tough time understanding some of the assignments because they were quite ambiguous and could have used more instruction. Obviously the flex time didnt work because obviously we like to sleep or hang out with friends more than work, but oh well it was a learning experience for both of us. And the most obvious being the lack of English work, but i feel thats been said enough. On the positive side learned a lot on the field trips, learned lots about each-other in the seminars, and overall had fun through the semester. This is definitely a course I recommend for a new course style and an interesting look at our world.
ReplyDelete-Riley W
In some ways I wish there was more time... I wold have liked to extend more of the English side that naturally flows at the end of each Geography topic (e.g. explore fiction and non-fiction beyond the textbook). I wonder how to make assignments less ambiguous... I worry that if I make it too clear then students are just completing a task that I have asked for instead of creating their own inquiry. We actually ran out of time for some Geography topics, too, but I think the subject was well covered.
DeleteI enjoyed the TED talks and current event studies, but found that there was a lot of empty time that could have been better spent. When we did work it was constructive, but we seemed to spend large amounts of time filling in notes that we would later go over together. Maybe those two activities could be combined? I found the flex blocks helpful in completing work on my own time/own space and would've liked it to continue. Doing the portfolios and having room to be "creative" was interesting, but I felt there was a bit too much emphasis on the creative and not enough structure in places. Not all of us have our most inspirational moments talking about soil. I will most likely keep my portfolio going- it is a useful place to store related documents. I did learn a lot about geography but found the straight English a bit lacking. It will be interesting to see how this course changes in the next years.
ReplyDeletePippa
Insightful comments... thanks. Indeed the course will evolve, more integration of topics for sure. The flex time is a tough one. To be honest, you and a handful of others used it very well but some did not use it at all. I think I should figure it out so that students can only be on flex if they have completed basic expectations for the week.
DeleteI think this course was an interesting experience. I enjoyed the field trips as ways of connecting dots with the stuff we leaned in class. I liked the way we did flex blocks in the beginning, with us being allowed to work in our own spaces, instead of at school. I understand that there were issues with us being allowed to do that, but it was a good idea. The flex blocks were good throughout the rest of the course as well, as it allowed time to work on different assignments, despite procrastination. My only problem with it is the work that you assigned on flex blocks, as I often had too much to complete in one block, causing me n some cases to have more work at the end of the block then I did at the beginning. I found the geography in the course to be interesting, I think I learned quite a bit about it. However, in my opinion, the English portion was somewhat lacking, being, when we did do it, mostly stuff that we did on our own, with not much direction. I hope you keep up with this course, as it is a unique experience, and quite fun at times.
ReplyDeleteThankyou,
Lyndsey
Awesome comments, thanks! The "flex" and level of independence is very interesting. I'm finding that students are very used to having their learning "directed" by the teacher and others and find it hard to structure independent inquiry including goals and formats. Learning curve on this, I guess. You appeared to have the opposite problem from many others... instead of having too much to do during flex, many students just blew it off and did not bother trying. I can understand why (I'm not upset by this), but I would like to work on this area if I teach this course combo again.
DeleteEnglish and Geo has been a very interesting course. I enjoyed the field trips and having more than one way to experience the knowledge that we were absorbing throughout the year.The flex blocks this past semester both good and bad for me personally because sometimes I didn't use it to the full extent that it could of and others times I did, so flex time is up in the air for me. Having a digital portfolio was also another unique thing that I liked to participate in and update. Altogether the course had it goods and bads but was very purposeful and can make someone a more knowledgeable person.
ReplyDeleteAnnika
I appreciate your willingness to try all the different opportunities in the course... many experiments and ideas, for sure, and some that I didn't get to as a teacher (only so much time in the day!), so I can definitely learn from this.
DeleteThis was an awesome experiment and I really enjoyed my time in the class, I especially loved the Seminar times, I wanted every class to be spent like that :) Also I don't believe I am doing the Geography exam tomorrow. Just the English :)
ReplyDeleteAmanda
Thanks for your comment. What was it you liked about the Seminars... the emphasis on students sharing their own ideas (with some lead-time beforehand), the conversation around the circle (o.k. it was a square!), the topics, or the fact that the group was smaller? Or something else? I really appreciated your contributions so I'm curious to know.
Delete