::A Geek in Korea::

I had a really lame unit in my science book I had to stretch out to last all period. The topic of the day was “Matter can be different sizes.” There were about three sentences of actual information, then a list of different items that the students were supposed to put into a “Big” or “Small” category. Lame. I had to come up with something better. I made a list of fifteen items of various sizes ranging from a piece of rice to the ocean. The students then had to order them from smallest to largest with my help to decide disputes.

Once we settled on the relative position of all the different words, I labeled each of the spaces “between” the items given, and the students had to think of something that would be bigger than one, but smaller than the other. For example, students said,  “A basketball is bigger than a book, but smaller than a watermelon.” We went through, analyzing each gap and trying to find an answer.

My class of ten students were stumped trying to think of something, “Larger than an elephant, but smaller than a tree.” I kept prompting them for things that might work. Things were either much too small, or much too large. Eventually, after a minute or two of silence, a boy raised his hand to answer.

“So, what’s bigger than an elephant, and smaller than a tree?” I asked.

“That’s easy teacher. Two elephants.”

I have to admit, I laughed a lot at that answer. But it still didn’t count. (We settled on “Swimming Pool” for the answer.)

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Tags: big, small, science, lesson, esl, smartass student