Saturday, January 14, 2012

Harry Potter Camp - Day 3 - Flying Class

Day Three was flying class.  This day gave my OCD/perfectionist side a bit of a problem, because teaching flying class on Day Three meant that I would be bound to show the Harry Potter movie out of order.  I know, I know.  This is not actually a big deal at all, and, yet, it bothered me.  I remembered telling my mom my reasoning on this one:  "I'm still close enough to my school days that I remembered how annoyed I got when teachers only showed clips of movies or, WORSE YET, showed them out of order!  What's the point in that?!  Just do it in order!"  Unfortunately, I made my original plans without the movie in front of me, and I was just working on it by memory.  Then, I printed and photocopied some dated instructions, thus sealing my students into their out-of-order, movie-clipped state.  Poor kids.  Just kidding, they didn't care at all.  I'm just strange, apparently.

I think this was the class that sealed the deal.  The kids and I were a bit undecided about how we were feeling about this camp: I was nervous, mostly because of my sketchy lesson plans, and they were busy debating being bored.  The focus of this day was prepositions, which means only one thing in Harry Potter World: Flying.  Duh.  Unlike what I told my friend Greg Small, this did not involve me throwing small, Asian kids across my classroom.  What it DID involve was an obstacle course and a rather close-quartered game of steal the bacon (it was then that I realized I probably should have saved this camp for summertime).

I double-checked that the kids understood their prepositions, using the handsome fellow on the right as an example, as he flew around my PowerPoint presentation (I'm eternally gratefully to my third grade teacher for making me master that program), which thoroughly impressed my kids.  I love it when it's the little things that do that.  Then it was time for the real fun to begin.

First up was the obstacle course, to make sure that they could control their brooms.  There were three styles of broom from which they could pick: a large one that looked just like the brooms in the movies, a medium one that was a bit flimsy, and a small one that is just the right size for a kindergartener to sweep a room (but certainly not for my 5'8" self).  The kids then were to "fly" the obstacle course (the broom staying between their legs), following the instructions that were posted around.  Each house could pick one representative.  Whoever went the fastest would be the winner.  The first flight was painstakingly slow, and he ended up showing the path to all the other students, so I allowed him to challenge the fastest house after all four had gone.  These kids, trained to memorize like beasts, got really good at this game really quickly.



Next, I informed the kids that there were some openings on their house Quidditch teams, and the teams had gotten so desperate that they had decided to open try-outs to first years.  So, we watched the clip talking about Quidditch rules (You guessed it!  It's attached to the title), we went over it via PowerPoint, and then we played Steal the Snitch (aka Steal the Bacon).  The fact that the kids were playing in their socks on a hard wood floor added a rather interesting twist to the match.  There was very little English happening on their part during this game, but I spoke plenty of it to give them a headache, I'm sure, so we'll chalk that one up to a listening exercise.  :P



Slowly, but surely I'm getting these up.  I've got two blogs going now.  The other is a resource for me to share my particularly successful lesson plans.  Feel free to visit this post to better understand why I would spend my time doing that.  The point is, it's taking me a little longer to get stuff on here too.  So go grab a butterbeer and a pumpkin pasty so you can enjoy the wait, rather than investing your time in staring at you 12-handed clock that STILL won't make things happen faster... it'll only inform you a little more as to why things are going slow.

<3

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