Left Field Lesson
SO in preparation for writing about a lesson left-of-field I was lucky enough, (lucky, yes I think that’s the word I’d use here), to revisit the paraphernalia that accompanied the lesson. The accoutrements if you will to the core concept, the learning objective and knowledge base that formed the nuclei of the lesson. Some of them involved images of a not so we behind the ears geography teacher on a jaunt around the fair city of Bristol; sporting that ever so stylish swept back long hari and aviator glasses.
Maybe lucky wasn’t the word I’d want to use here!
But to the lesson, well, it was the hazy summer of 2011 and I, refreshed from a relaxing break decide that I want to create a form of mystery tour for my geography classes instilling a sense of location, map skills and most of all, using a piece of personal experience to boot. For me adding a personalised element to your lesson, the hinterland aspect some may call it, creates a narrative that if relationships have been built correctly, will support and drive learning forward. Being skilful to share just enough about yourself and your own personal exploits linked to the subject area can make those difficulties desirable for the pupils as they seek to find out more knowledge through the personalised-lens you provide.
It was the 175th anniversary for Bristol Zoo and as part of their celebrations they had decided to create the project Wow! Gorilla in honour of their birthday. 61 life sized fibreglass gorillas adorned the city of Bristol and beyond. The project followed the concept of the “Land in Sicht” the original Swiss project by artistic director Walter Knapp and best of all for us geographers, it came with a map, a chance to track down and visit all 61. What joy! What fun! What an opportunity to ‘magpie’ that information and material and create my very own Gorilla lesson for Key Stage 3. The preparation was simple, visit as many as possible and get a photo of myself, my wife or my incredibly reluctant friend Ian, with the gorilla. Then a picture of the location, then create a clue linked to the location. Next we needed a variation of the map used to locate the gorillas. The one provided by the zoo was slightly unwieldy, not to mention theirs (!) so creation of a specific map to our school was completed. Finally the knowledge that would form the foundation of the lesson; Maps Skills and Ecology. Modelling pupils how to effectively navigate around the map using grid references clues and key location names and features to successfully locate their gorilla.
Achieving a high success rate in this was key; if they couldn’t locate where the gorillas had been placed on the map their enthusiasm for the next challenge, addressing the plight of the gorillas habitat linking in to issue of climate change may dwindle. The key here was relevance; they formed a link to the gorillas, the project and the issues surrounding it much more through the narrative approach of my wife and I, (and the reluctant party of Ian who really just wanted to go and have a drink at the start of the day!), travelling around and attempting to locate them all in one day. It became the basis for the lesson; do we think that Mr McGrath managed to reach them all? What barriers may he have faced looking at the map? How may he have overcome them? What geographical skis has he employed to succeed? Why did he choose to wear flip-flops when undertaking this task! But was this enough?
No, not to a young and bullishly geography teacher wanting to show he could break from the norm so I looked further afield for inspiration and found, well, a field. Out school field to be exact. Why couldn’t we transpose Bristol onto the 4 sq acres of land we were fortunate to be able to use? Allowing our pupils to actually navigate around the ‘city’ to recognise the sheer scale of what the project had undertaken would support their development of scale, direction and location. I had also secretly hoped it instilled an element of fun into the lesson, ready for the more sombre approach to habitat loss and climate change that was forthcoming.
So that’s what happened. A mapping task inside, followed by a structured jaunt around the field pretending we were in the urban street of Bristol, encouraging them to use the domain-specific terminology, increasing their oracy and vocabulary skills by having to communicate in an external environment. And it was fieldwork, albeit internal and local, but a real skill-based approach prior to engaging in some powerful knowledge and practice. The role of fieldwork, of physically getting up and going out is obviously going to change with current restrictions but it’s essential that, even though issues can arise, (weather, losing materials, PE lessons involving javelins in our space!!), that we, where possible, try to accommodate these practices for our pupils.
Contextualised learning can have a huge impact on pupils; we want them to succeed, we want them to learn the best that has been said, written or thought about our subject, but how can we emphasise that if we ourselves don’t model that approach. It requires that bravery to open areas of our lives we may not normally divulge to pupils. To take a chance and humanise what can be a challenging task or skillset. Shing and Brod (2016) state the prior knowledge facilitates memory for incoming information because it provides structure into which new information can be integrated; so contextualising for our pupils, allowing to experiencing degrees and elements of the concept or knowledge either through sharing our own or engaging them in bastardised versions of larger slightly unobtainable experiences, (especially in an hour lesson), will go a long way in creating that scholarship approach to learning we all crave for our pupils. And if it means that we get a tad wet, windy and cold whilst trying to chase gorilla’s in the mist then I can live with that!
No judging please, I was young and naïve!!
#proudtolearn 