Blog Post 4
The video is a short, thought-provoking video that explores the relationship between a grandfather and grandson. Students may internally reflect on their relationships with family/community members, and the skills they learn outside of school. The video does not inherently provoke students to interact with it, each other or the instructor. Instead, the video evokes sentimentality, and represents traditions that the teacher can help students explore though activities. I propose a Brainstorm Board Discussion.
Before the activity, the teacher writes discussion prompts and posts them around the room. The teacher could use whiteboards or chalk boards, or use a piece of cardstock for each prompt. The teacher can choose to provide the questions to students prior to playing the video, or reveal them afterwards depending on the class’s recounting ability.
Ideally the brainstorm board activity allows more students to participate in discussions by reducing anxiety around public speaking, and eliminating discussions formats that only allow one student to speak at a time. The activity also allows multiple discussion to happen at once, so students do not have to wait to express themselves, or cut somebody else off. Students who are confident in voicing their opinions and perceptions will be naturally slowed down as they focus on their own writing, and must read other’s contributions.
This activity should help students recognize multiple ways of learning, and recognize each other’s life experiences as valid sources of knowledge. It also introduces them to Coast Salish practices and art, and recognize totem poles as meaningful creations.
Set up for the activity would require minimal work for the instructor; their only responsibility would be to write and post the prompts, and ensure every student has an appropriate writing utensil. For larger amounts of students, the instructor may add more prompts, or post multiple copies of the same prompt so there is more space for students to engage.
For students who have a difficulty reading other student’s hand writing, or writing for themselves, teachers, EAs or other students can help read and write. Unfortunately, this accommodation would significantly increase workload for supporting adults.
The teacher may choose to prevent these barriers by using an online discussion board for the classroom, and posting the prompts as main discussion topics. Children can then modify the font within the app, or with a browser extension. Students who are limited by their writing/typing abilities can use a speech to text extension to aprticipate.
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