"I don't know if I could give up eleven years of my life to do that," remarked one of my students. My students had just finished reading a current events article from LesPlan entitled "Walking Around the World". In August 2000, Jean Beliveau left his home in Montreal and began an eleven year journey walking around the world. He is on the last leg of his walk on his way home to Montreal, somewhere past Kamloops, B.C. at the writing of this post. The article initiated a wonderful class-wide discussion, first with a focus on inferring (a reading comprehension strategy), then moving into other areas of discussion, including the positive aspects and hardships that one would experience when undertaking this kind of journey. I also encourage my students to make connections with any readings we do in class (another comprehension strategy; one student mentioned Terry Fox as someone who took on a similar type of journey), so we went online to Beliveau's website to check out photos and virtual maps of his trip.
After exploring the website, my students and I talked about how exciting it would be to take a trip like this. I told them that many other people have travelled around the world, with greater or lesser sucess, and sometimes even come up with a "gimmick" to showcase their journey. One such video that came to mind, and which my class enjoyed watching immensely,was the following:
No comments:
Post a Comment