Lauren's Adventures in Alaska: Old Lessons Retaught

I mentioned in a previous post how I had recognized a melody during the Russian Orthodox service I attended. I confirmed my suspicion that Tchaikovsky used it in writing his 1812 Overture. Today was what I call "media day," meaning that instead of teaching fine arts I present videos, music, or images that relate to anything else I'm teaching. I started off playing a recording of the hymn. I asked the kids if anyone recognized the melody. All the heads started nodding. I asked if they thought they'd recognize it anywhere. Some of the heads continued nodding, especially two of the high school boys. Then I started a video of a live Boston Pops concert of the 1812 Overture, which we had previously seen. As soon as the music started, most of the kids recognized the melody. I let them listen with wonder and pleasure, then asked those who'd said they could recognize that melody why they didn't recognize it the *last* time I played that video. Suddenly listening to classical music became relevant.

Earlier in the day, I had gotten to revisit a lesson from Monday. We're doing a unit on trickster tales from around the world. As we started the unit, I wanted to introduce some literary terms. Among them was "anthropomorphism." The kids got the concept right away. I was sure they had it when one of them used the way I interact with my dogs as an example! They had more trouble remembering the word itself. Well, the home page for The Guardian web site highlighted an article with the headline "Anthropomorphism." I stuck the slide from Monday's powerpoint into today's, and added a link to the article. It was so cool to show a review slide and then open an article with today's date using the same term.

Those events, the times you get to close a circle and make learning relevant, those are the things that make teaching so satisfying!

P.S. I don't have any pictures to go with that story, so here are some pictures of a beautiful sunrise I saw this past week.