Loved Lesson

Here's a great lesson Mr. Leclere recently saw:

Fridays in Pat Harder and Danica Alter’s 6th grade language arts class are all about
TED. I’m sure you are familiar with TED Talks – fifteen minutes or so of someone
speaking on something both fascinating and of particular interest to them. Personally, I
find the passion with which most TED presenters speak to suck me into topics I would
never have considered listening to a fifteen minute presentation on. Listening to the discussion
the class was engaged in about magic and magicians, secondary to a TED Talk
made me think this was true for some of our 6th graders as well.

More than just listening to and appreciating the Talk, students in the class were making
observations about the topic and generating open-ended questions whose purpose is to
discover ways to take a deeper and deeper dive into a subject. And it is a good thing that
the students are learning and practicing this skill. While they are learning from various
TED Talks, they are also preparing their own. Equipped with a template for researching
and learning more and more about their own passion, these students are learning to
immerse themselves in a topic of their choice. I am certainly looking forward to hearing
them share!