Ancient India lesson plan ED 2135

Ancient India lesson plan - Class 2 - ED2135

WHY.
Some Steiner schools teach the cultural epochs in one 3 week block in Class 5. Other schools such as ours prefer to alot one epoch per year throughout the 7 years. In Class 1 we look at the Atlantean times when man was still in his Garden of Eden and part of the spiritual world around him. In Class 2 we move to the Ancient Indian epoch where man was very aware of not being part of the spiritual world and yearned for it or spent years striving for understanding via the Buddha's teachings or other meditations.
The other epochs studied go as follows:- Class 3 - Persia and the story of Zarathustra, Class 4 - Ancient Egypt, Class 5 - Ancient Greece, Class 6 - Ancient Rome, Class 7 - Arthurian legends.
Each epoch resonates with the soul development of the children of the appropriate age group and can be explored in a variety of ways, through all sorts of lessons and experiences.

In Class 2 we will be studying some of the gods of Ancient (and modern) India, the clothes, animals, dance, music, food and customs. It is culminated with an end of year play.
It is such a broad subject that it is hard to cover it in one 3 week main lesson block so it is spread out over the year. Fortunately I have parents in the class involved in dance and music who are happy to contribute time and expertise.

This lesson is part of a 3 week main lesson set in ancient India. The Class two children have been hearing the serial story of Mahalia and Bharata, two young people who have broken with the strict rules of the caste system and have run off together. Mahalia is the daughter of a laundryman and Bharata the son of a rich Brahmin. Through listening to this story the children have been learning about the Hindu gods, Indian customs and wildlife. They have learnt some basic dance steps,listened to a musical performance, made some Indian food and are making saris and T shirts for their end of year play which is based on this story. Throughout the year they have made a felt elephant and modelled clay animals. Everyone is involved in some way. The lesson described below is one day in the life of this 3 week main lesson and has a Natural Science flavour.

MAIN LESSON TERM 4 2007

KLA - SAT

Outcomes - LTS1.3

LTS1.6

KLA - CAPA

Outcomes - MUS1.1

VAS1.1

9 am-9.05 - Morning verse and greetings. (Glasser)

9.05 - 9.25 - Weekly spelling list work, students choose a word and read and spell it, everyone has a turn. (1.) Times tables practice with percussion.(2.)

9.30 - 9.40 - Tiger song sheet is handed out and the children listen and join in. (1, 3.) The class wonder audibly why they have a song about a tiger, they start to get excited.

9.40 - 9.55 - General discussion about cats, who has one, how they move, how quiet they are, how they can go from sound sleep to action very quickly.(6) Ask some students to demonstrate cat movements, get class to close their eyes to see how quietly their friends can walk. (5)Ask class what size cat door they would need for a tiger, ask who has seen one, where it was, what sort of environment it was in. Tell children how big a tiger can be and demonstrate size.Important points to make are that tigers love swimming, have a large territory and are solitary unlike lions. (6) Ask what general knowledge they have about tigers and then lead into the story after some quick revision about the previous day's story.(Vygotsky). For the sleepy heads I insert some nonsense scenarios that did not happen and enjoy the confusion and laughter.

10.00 - 10.15 - Students listen to the new part of the home grown story introducing Dream-Eyes the tiger who was wounded in the hunt for Mahalia and Bharata. This is followed by more tiger discussion, in my class everyone is an expert.(1)

10.15 - 10.40 - Students set up their paints and do a painting of a tiger as directed by myself. They use the colours yellow, gold, orange and purple. The painting takes most of the children about 15 minutes and they start to pack up. We sing the song again.(3,4.)

10.40 - The students stand quietly while I congratulate them on their beautiful paintings. I ask them to bring in a drawing or a model of their idea of a perfect tiger enclosure. (Piaget)

Class is released for recess.

SONG.

"I'm a tiger, let me sleep.

Don't wake me, let me dream.

It's so cool here in the shade,

As cool as a flowing stream.

But now I'm awake! Alert strong awake.

Let the forest be aware, I'm a stripey here-and-there.

With my ever ready jaws and my velvet paddy paws,

Now I'm on the prowl, as quiet as an owl.

A quiver and a creep, a longing and a LEAP!

Now I'm tired."

This lesson has yet to be taught so no evaluation available . I have tried to incorporate at least three Intelligences into the lesson, but I believe I have covered more.

1.Linguistic

2.Mathematical

3.Musical

4.Spacial

5.Bodily kinesthetic

6.Naturistic

I know if deep learning is taking place by observing play activities in the playground, (Vygotsky)fielding questions in casual conversations and seeing the books they get from the library. If the lesson has hit the spot they always do their own research.(Piaget) (Bloom)

By approaching a subject in a threefold way - through their head forces in discussions, through their heart forces through story and through their will in the painting activity, the learning process is usually very thorough and deep.

Generation Y

I am the mother of three Gen. Y's. When they were babies we were living in a situation that involved a very small solar power system so they were free from technology until they were in primary school. They took to it like ducks to water! First they mastered the TV remote and the DVD player. They showed my parents how to operate their's (quite a few times). When they were deemed old enough they got mobile phones and they have been connected ever since. When we were in Bali my daughter made it a mission to find the nearest internet place so she could connect with her Australian social life and brag about being in Bali.
Watching homework being done is an interesting experience as several things are usually happening at the same time- sound system, msn, homework and mobile phone. How can they get things done in such apparent chaos? (Generation Jones here.)
In their friendships they are honest and very upfront about anything that upsets them. They have healthy and relaxed relationships with the opposite sex . One of my sons is very "blokey" but also enjoys discussing facets of human nature with me.
I have a class of baby Gen Y's and they are scary. No topic is sacred and they rip the scabs off other's sore feelings with a frightening detachment. At the tender age of 8 they are feisty and ready to take the world on and tell it off if it doesn't live up to their expectations. Watch out everyone!

BUSINESSWEEK
COVER STORY Generation YToday's teens--the biggest bulge since the boomers--may force marketers to toss their old tricksAt malls across America, a new generation is voting with its feet.At Towson Town Center, a mall outside of Baltimore, Laura Schaefer, a clerk at the Wavedancer surf-and-skateboard shop, is handling post-Christmas returns. Coming back: clothes that fit snugly and shoes unsuitable for skateboarding.
Schaefer, 19, understands. ''They say 'My mom and dad got me these','' she says.At the Steve Madden store in Roosevelt Mall on Long Island, N.Y., parents, clad in loafers and Nikes (NKE), are sitting quietly amid the pulsating music while their teenage daughters slip their feet into massive Steve Madden platform shoes. Many of the baby boomer-age parents accompanying these teens look confused. And why not? Things are different in this crowd.
Nike has found out the hard way that Gen Y is different. Although still hugely popular among teens, the brand has lost its grip on the market in recent years, according to Teenage Research Unlimited, a Northbrook (Ill.) market researcher. Nike's slick national ad campaigns, with their emphasis on image and celebrity, helped build the brand among boomers, but they have backfired with Gen Y. ''It doesn't matter to me that Michael Jordan has endorsed Nikes,'' says Ben Dukes, 13, of LaGrange Park, Ill.
Missteps such as Nike's disastrous attempt to sponsor Olympic snowboarders two years ago and allegations of inhumane overseas labor practices added to Gen Y's scorn. As Nike is discovering, success with this generation requires a new kind of advertising as well as a new kind of product. The huge image-building campaigns that led to boomer crazes in everything from designer vodka to sport-utility vehicles are less effective with Gen Y.
''The old-style advertising that works very well with boomers, ads that push a slogan and an image and a feeling, the younger consumer is not going to go for,'' says James R. Palczynski, retail analyst for Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. and author of YouthQuake, a study of youth consumer trends.
Instead, Gen Yers respond to humor, irony, and the (apparently) unvarnished truth. Sprite has scored with ads that parody celebrity endorsers and carry the tagline ''Image is nothing. Obey your thirst.'' J.C. Penney & Co.'s (JCP) hugely successful Arizona Jeans brand has a new campaign showing teens mocking ads that attempt to speak their language. The tagline? ''Just show me the jeans.". .

Labor, the lesser evil

Re the article in the Weekend Australian about a national curriculum. It seems that Australia is falling behind in its educational goals and is constantly being outdone by South Korea and Finland. What do these two countries do that we don't in our education? Quick research on the net revealed that Finland requires that its teachers have a masters in education and that they specialise in their subjects.Therefore students in Finland have teachers that know their subjects inside out and can be constructive and creative facilitators for learning. Finnish teachers are not inspected as we are, it is assumed that there are expert teachers in every classroom.
South Korea is different. Instead it has a strong culture that imbues its children with respect for adults, leading to quieter classrooms! But it also puts enormous pressure on its students resulting in a very high suicide rate.
In Finland there are expert teachers and in Korea a strong culture and unrelenting pressure to do well. I prefer the expert teacher scenario of Finland. Perhaps we don't need a national curriculum, rather we need the human element of better educated teachers.

David Ausubel

DAVID AUSUBEL AND THE ADVANCE ORGANISER

Definitions
1. A "statement of inclusive concepts to introduce and sum up material that follows" (Woolfolk, 2001).
2. Cognitive instructional strategy used to promote the learning and retention of new information (Ausubel, 1960).
3. It is a method of bridging and linking old information with something new.


Advanced organizers are a concept developed and systematically studied by David Ausubel in 1960. He was very influenced by the teachings of Jean Piaget (Geier, 1999). Ausubel has worked consistently to prove that advance organizers facilitate learning and much of his research has influenced others since the 1960s. However, throughout the history of using advance organizers, it is still undecided whether or not advance organizers fully promote learning or if other processes are more beneficial, but much of the research promotes the ability of advance organizers to be useful in improving levels of understanding and recall (Mayer, 2003).
Since the advent of advance organizers, research has been able to prove that these work best when there is no prior knowledge involved, because an advance organizer becomes the students prior knowledge before learning the new material. If prior knowledge is available, advance organizers do not work as well for these students (Mayer, 2003).
Ausubel's advance organizer can best be classified as a deductive method. Deductive methods or reasoning provide the rule to follow then the example leading to the correct answer or learning (Mayer, 2003). This is opposite from inductive methods or reasoning that provides the example to follow then the rule.
Advance organizers are also highly useful in the process of transferring knowledge. Because of the deductive reasoning, students are able to use the rule then the example for learning to occur. Mayer writes in his text, "...the effects of advance organizers should be most visible for tests that involve creative problem solving or transfer to new situations, because the advance organizer allows the learner to organize the material into a familiar structure" (Mayer, 2003).

Examples and Types of advance organizers
1. Advanced Organizers
2. Expository - describe the new content.
3. Narrative - presents the new information in the form of a story to students.
4. Skimming - used to look over the new material and gain a basic overview.
5. Graphic organizer - visuals to set up or outline the new information.
6. Concept mapping
Ausubel's definition is that advanced organizers should not contain "to be learned content" and the information being presented should be at a higher "higher level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness" than the information to be learned (Ausubel,1963).

http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Advance_organizers


In order to enhance meaningful learning Ausubel believed that it was important to have students preview information to be learned. Teachers could do this by providing a brief introduction about the way that information that is going to be presented is structured. An example of this might be opening a lesson with a statement that provides an overview of what will be taught. In presenting outlines of information, teachers can help students see the big picture to be learned. http://vanguard.phys.udiaho.edu/mod/models/ausubel/index.html
This approach encourages students to build upon prior knowledge and mentally organize their thoughts before being introduced to the details of new concepts.
By making new material more familiar and meaningful to students, it should be easier to retrieve. (Gagne, 1988)
http://chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/strategies/cognitivism/AdvancedOrganizers.htm