And The Hunt Is On....

Today's lesson, November 7, was one of the most exciting classes I have had in a long time. Our two teacher assistants put together a massive scavenger hunt. The class was split into teams of 4-5 students. Each team created a flag that would represent their team and be included in all of their pictures of the clues. I always get pumped about competing against other teams. The best part of the hunt was the clues. It was not a list of points we had to go to. We had to figure out the clue before we could go to that specific checkpoint. Once at the check point we took a picture with our phones doing our team pose with our flag. We then sent it back to home base and waited to see if we got the location right. My favorite leg of the hunt was going to the racket ball courts. The team member taking the picture went to the observation deck while the rest of us went into the courts to get our picture taken. I would with out a doubt use this type of lesson when it comes to teaching. What's great about this lesson is that the students concetrate more on figuring out the clues then the actual physical activity that is taking place. You don't realize how winded you are when you get to the finish line. All you care about is figuring out the clue and getting their as fast as possible. The only con to this lesson is where all the checkpoints are. Having college students cross roads and run a half mile away from the school is not a big deal. With middle school and high school students this might not be appropriate. Plus running through the halls of a high school can lead to a huge distraction problem. We actually did things like this at my high school outside. We were able to stray quite far from the school. Our school is located in the middle of nowhere surrounded by farms and woods and the teachers roamed around supervising the students. I loved the idea of interdisciplinary teaching. They incorporated a little bit of history into the lesson with the explorers and their countries. They also incorporated team work and thinking, listening and reading skills. This lesson kept me more active than anything that I have done previously in this class. Like I said early, I was just worrried about finding the clue, collection the picture, and returning home to finish first. As you can see by my graph I was running the entire time and only stopped to take the picture before moving on. If you can't see the chart very well click here.