Jasper in Action

I really liked the premise of the Jasper series, in spite of the fact they were a little dated, and so I tried one of them out with my grade 7 class as part of their Kingdom Day Challenge. I searched them out and found a couple of the original videos on youtube, Boone Meadow and the Recycling Challenge. Today we watched Boone Meadow as it ties in with a few things we are doing in class. The students worked in their Kingdom Groups of 5 students in each group. The groups are heterogeneous.

The students were quite engaged in the video and it did not take too long before a few students realized that they should be making notes about the information being given in the video. One student asked if we could replay the first bit so they could make notes about the information and I obliged. Other students soon caught on and started to keep notes also. They seemed to enjoy the characters in the video and appreciated the story line. Once the challenge question was given, the students started to figure it out and soon realized they needed some of the other information they had seen in the video, but had not realized they might need later. The beauty of the video on the Smartboard is they could go back and view the actual frames to find the place in the film for the information they needed. They could move the pointer back and forth as many times as required in order to find the information, and many of the students took advantage of this. The picture below shows a couple of the students checking this out.

All in all, I found the exercise quite rewarding in that the students were engaged and motivated to find the solution to the challenge. There were a few different solutions and I am looking forward to the discussion we will have around them tomorrow.

Anne

2 comments

  1. Awesome Anne,
    Thanks for sharing. I was hesitant to try the video (but think I would have) because I was worried about the dated characters. I appreciate hearing that kids in your class actually found them engaging. Glad it went so well. Love when we try something new and it is a hit.
    Way to forge ahead.
    Catherine

  2. Nice work, Anne! How great is it to try something new, whilst still being in the course? I’m looking forward to cracking open my revised T-GEM project next week. I have to split it over Spring Break, but oh well… As Catherine just said, it’s so great to find something new to spice things up, and as a bonus, it actually pans out! Cheers, Dana

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