Hamilton cluster

Thanks Michelle and colleagues at Aberdeen school for making everyone so welcome on Thursday evening. As always, an energizing and reinspiring couple of hours.  We had good numbers attending including several first timers – always good to see! Our focus this time was “hooks” – different ways to start a MOTE experience and build engagement. Experienced teachers shared their favourite ideas and we tried some out in groups. Some of the group’s ideas for hooks are shown below (with specific examples in brackets).

• Letter or message from someone in need (message in a bottle from Spinifex the alchemist, asking for advice)
• Teacher in role as someone with a problem (elderly gentleman who has taken in too many stray animals)
• Teacher as ‘effigy’ (poacher holding an ivory tusk)
• Vignette or short scene created in advance (Villagers discussing Maui the trickster’s latest trick)
• Artefact or object (box marked ‘fragile, kiwi eggs’ – found upside down with broken shells nearby)
• Sound effect or You Tube clip (the talking crab)
• Partly created setting  (the undersea rainbow cave – children invited to complete the setting before meeting the wise octopus)
• Transformed classroom or school space (classroom trashed by monster) (school field taped off as possible gold mine site)
• Taped outline on the floor (human body – crime scene)
• Symbolic picture drawn in front of the children (tall ship) (whale with netting around the tail)
• Symbol prepared in advance  (large red blot – paint? blood?)
  
• Puzzle pieces (pieces of tuatara)

We spent some time exploring the theatrical aspects of these hooks, and through workshopping we made discoveries about what kind of teaching strategies can help  (ritual, conscious use of pace, genuine questioning, parsimony, spacial signalling). It was certainly interesting to focus in such detail on just one aspect of Mantle of the Expert. There’s so much to explore!

Next cluster meeting will be at Melville Intermediate at the end of November / early December. Date will be confirmed soon.