Today
in the Humanities lesson study cell we focussed on understanding both content
and teaching methods related to teenage substance abuse. Prince Tshilowa and Hanno brought some
content information around the causes of drug addiction and way the brain responds, myths
about drug addiction, signs and symptoms and how people who have fallen into
addiction might be helped.
Anton Reynolds, part of our Teaching and Learning Centre gave us some broad stokes ideas about how we can sensitively and
effectively begin to address this important topic with teenagers. We realised
that we should try to steer clear of any form of moralising, preaching or
excessive teacher talk. The group agreed that we will all take a good look at
the content or “what” we hope to teach the Gr.9 classes and think of at least
one learning task that will facilitate engagement with that particular piece of
information or will lead to thinking around a question related to that
information.
We loosely divided the different kind of learning tasks to be
looked at as follows:
- Heidi and Anton – A “do now” task that will help students to look at the issues and arguments surrounding substance abuse from various angels – Parent, Child, School, Police etc.
- Mpho and Joe - A paper based case study type task that will help students to become aware of the “root causes” of addiction
- Hanno and Brain – A task based on a video clip of young addict sharing the story of his addiction and the difficult process of rehabilitation
- Prince and Sibongile – A task that helps students engage with and understand the serious nature of the physical symptoms experienced by an addict
Our agreement
for next week is that we will bring these different tasks in a typed format so
Heidi and Joe can lead us in a session where we try to bring all the tasks
together into one lesson script that we feel might be effective.
No comments:
Post a Comment