Zoe’s Blog of Joy

Presentations

There were some really fantastic lessons presented over the two presentation weeks. I have left this rather late to reflect and I can barely remember them but I’m going to give it a go…

There were two presentations on the Stolen Generation. One of the presenters did not want students to see the film “Rabbit Proof Fence” before starting their work on the subject and one presenter made it a focus of the unit, so they had a very different approach. I really enjoyed listening to the Archie Roach song in Darcie’s presentation. The song alone could be pulled apart and explored for different themes and ideas.

Jess had created a really interesting drama lesson on “difference” using “The Lost Thing” as a focus. I liked the way she kept drawing the lessons back to the text, slowly revealing more about the story and the “thing”. I recall creating scenes where we play the main character in the text, bringing the lost thing home, and showing the reaction of the parents. I really liked Jesse’s lessons and I’d love to use them somewhere – maybe in my own lessons with my youth at risk.

We also had lessons on drug education and sex education. The sex education lesson was focused on contraception. When Suzie first introduced the idea I wasn’t sure how she was going to present the lesson in a drama format, and I got pictures in my head of the kinds of “role play” we would be doing, but she tackled the topic really well with brainstorms, writing in role and other such things which I often forget to use in my own drama planning.

There were two lessons for the SOSE classroom, one on war, and one on Caroline Chisolm. Because these were topics I don’t know anything about, I had a little trouble following (or maybe just remembering?) the presentations. I know that they put heaps of work and preparation into these lessons and I reckon without actually taking the lesson its hard to convey it all in a 15 minute talk.

There was also a presentation for pre-school that was centred around a children’s book, Dr Dog. This was a really fun lesson to be a part of, and sort of made me wish I were going to be a pre-school teacher with delightful little darlings to teach instead of little teenage bastards who don’t give a shit (yeah, I know, they are not all like that, some teenagers are darlings too). It took me back to my kindergarten days, where I often spent time trying on doctors and nurses outfits and equipment and dreamed of one day becoming a doctor.

The other two lessons that I can remember were on bullying and religion. As for the SOSE classes, I did not really follow the RE class because I did not know anything about it, but I thought drama would be a really good way into heavy subjects like persecution and heavy texts like the bible. The bullying lesson was really well thought out and prepared. I liked the presentation which showed bullies on TV and in movies, and the flash cards were very flash! It’s great that she will be able to teach this on her rounds, I think it will go down really well and the kids will actually enjoy it and not feel like they are being patronized or lectured, which is really important.