Geometry puzzle…

A bear leaves his home. He walks 20km South, then 20km East and then 20km North. He finds that he is home! What colour is the bear? 

Need a clue?

Read this

http://education.theage.com.au/cmspage.php?intid=147&intversion=97

Thoughts on an Audience with Phil Beadle

Wish I had time to write more after such a wonderful session, but here are some thoughts, quotations and ideas arising from Phil Beadle’s masterclass at Adelaide University today.

• Take home advice: 1) Make all your students feel good about themselves all of the time. 2) Set the bar high and keep it high. 3) Mark their work, mark it well.
• “Make Surrealism part of the process of defining learning tasks.” In other words,  juxtaposition of the unexpected can drive creative processes.
• As an example of the above, we were asked to find ways to use the physical language of a randomly chosen sport to address learning in a randomly chosen subject area. I had swimming and maths. I haven’t fully processed the idea, but I’m exploring the analogy between freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly and addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.
• “Drama teachers have the best pedagogy of all secondary teachers.” Being married to one, I have to agree with that statement.
• Oblique strategy cards might have a place in the classroom, but would need to be adapted.

In all, it was 4 hours of humour, anecdotes and sound pedagogical advice. Phil was generous with his time, and at the end he took questions, signed books and chatted to me and my wife.

I leave full of ideas and inspiration.