Here’s how today’s class went down:

Mindful Breathing

Speaking of breathing, nothing will get you breathing harder than running a sub 4-minute mile.  I’m not speaking from experience, of course, but Roger Bannister’s collapse at the finish of the “Miracle Mile” race against John Landy (and others) on Saturday, 7 August 1954 at the Empire Games in Vancouver at long-gone Empire Stadium are my evidence.  Here’s the race courtesy of Mr. U. Tube.  Be sure to watch the interviews at the end with Landy and Bannister:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP_NzZP_LK0&feature=PlayList&p=88E0C2F9A12AB6F7&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=1[/youtube]

Here’s the statue on the southwest corner of the PNE grounds that captures forever Landy’s ill-fated over-the-shoulder glance.  Landy notes about the race and the statue that commemorates its most famous moment:

“When Lot’s wife looked back she was turned into a pillar of salt. When I looked back I was turned into a pillar of bronze!”

The Martha Game Warm Up

This activity caused a lot of laughter.  Here’s a link to online instructions for The Martha Game in addition to other Improvs and Warm Ups.

A Whole Class Novel Study… in Microcosm

The reality of your existence is that you will likely need to do a whole class novel at some stage.  We played with some approaches to doing this in the following ways:

• Read “What Was” & “What Can Be” on page 71 & 72 in Student Diversity and considered what resonated.
• Modeled the various parts of a novel study using the short, short, short story, The Choice by W. Hilcton-Young. Here’s what we did:
  • Connecting
    • Gallery Walk with Story Artifacts & Prediction
  • Processing
    • Listen-Sketch-Draft as I read the story aloud
    • Modified Sticky Notes & Group Discussion
  • Transforming
    • Hot Seat starring Williams, the time traveller, and the story narrator, Brian (my name for him)

I mentioned other options for exploring one novel in a class and set out a potential weekly time line.  Chapter 6 – The Whole Class Novel in Student Diversity has a lot more detail on the above strategies and much more.

Unit Plan Sharing

We took some time to have each of you mention the topic of your unit and one highlight.  After that, time was provided to speak to the unit’s authors about their product.  Feedback was given using the PQS – praise, questions, and suggestions – strategy.

At the end of the sharing session, I collected hard copies of each person’s:

• Unit Outline
• 2 Lesson Plans
• 5 Resource Evaluation Sheets

Call Back to The 2- 3 Things You’d Like Out of This Course Piece at the Start of the Course

While we didn’t get to everything LLED-related on this list, I did keep the list in mind as I planned.  I think we touched on many of the key items over the course of the term.  You can check the list out here, if you’re interested:

LLED 320 What I Want To Learn Info Gathering List

That’s all folks…

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBzJGckMYO4[/youtube]

– Lawrence