{"id":361,"date":"2005-05-30T12:54:28","date_gmt":"2005-05-30T12:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/2005\/05\/unconventional-lessons\/"},"modified":"2005-05-30T12:54:28","modified_gmt":"2005-05-30T12:54:28","slug":"unconventional-lessons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/2005\/05\/30\/unconventional-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"Unconventional Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m trying to come up with as many different games to play with the kids as possible so that I’m not stuck in the classroom with a room full of people that don’t want to be there, and for the times when we must use the classroom, I am trying to plan unconventionally.
\nThis week, I am going to teach the kids about streetball by using the And1 Mixtape and other DVDs. I’ll try and give them a peek into basketball culture and about stories of hope and despair like those seen in “Hoop Dreams”.
\nToday I took the students out to sketch and label some plants (a tree, flower, leaf, etc…), and they seemed to do pretty well.
\nRight now I’m planning a lesson themed “Your dream house”. I’m going to print out a huge copy of Bongo’s Dream House<\/a> with Japanese written under the English labels, and let the kids take most of a class to draw and label their own. By the way, this page has a bunch of Groening’s “Life in Hell” pages- they bring back so many memories.
\nUltimately, I would like to do some of my classes using the pool, and teaching games that I used to play as a kid, but at the moment this is just a pie in the sky. I am the only ALT I know who has successfully persuaded a school (in my case a couple of schools) to allow me to teach sports lessons and to use the gym.
\nUnfortunately, desinging lessons like these leads to great expectations from the students and teachers alike. I can make some pretty good, unconventional lessons, but with limited resources, a great demand for lessons (3 separate lessons PER WEEK), and disinterested students, there is only so much I can do. There will come a time when my tank runs out, and all that will be left are worksheets.
\nSo I am trying to space out these special lessons, but even so it is difficult.
\nThis originally started as a joke, but I’m toying with the idea of one lesson devoted to “quiet time”. I want to make a lesson on “meditation”, with the goal of “achieving inner peace” and “enhancing concentration”. The class will be quiet for the whole stretch, and maybe they’ll get something out of it (a nice rest). If this lesson goes well, then I might implement “nap time” every class for 20 minutes, and ask if we can have juice and cookies for the students.
\nOh, and dodgeball!!! Now that I think of it, regular class would be a great time to play this great sport. I think I’m going to allow head shots, purely for (my own personal) entertainment value.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m trying to come up with as many different games to play with the kids as possible so that I’m not stuck in the classroom with a room full of people that don’t want to be there, and for the times when we must use the classroom, I am trying to plan unconventionally. This week, … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cosmicbuddha.com\/adam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}