Columbus Day

This week mom was asked to teach a class about Columbus Day. Mom could not think of anything more boring than a lecture about a holiday that one cannot relate to, so she squeezed her brain to find a way to keep her students awake.

So she came up with a Jeopardy game. With the help of awesome uncle Internet, she used a Powerpoint template to create the game and she took the laptop to school. Interestingly enough, every student in mom's school has a laptop. The school was one of the three schools in the country selected by the ministry of Education to receive a laptop. How about that? Yet, there is no internet access at school. Rumor has it that there is a network, but the school has not paid for access. That's what the students say, anyway. Needless to say, there are no projectors in the classrooms either, so mom had to make do with setting the laptop on the teacher's desk and reading the questions out loud.

The students did not mind at all, however. There were all too happy to play a game instead of having to listen to a lecture! Mom divided them into three teams, and set out the rules: only team work, no individual answers, and only English talk.

The whole thing was a huge success. The students really got into it! Some were more competitive, others less, as expected, but to mom's great surprise not only did all of them participate, but they were also interested in the answers. Mom's selection of questions helped a great deal, of course. She deliberately chose questions whose answers would be quite unexpected or would require critical thinking more than factual knowledge.

If you're interested in more details, and you promise me a good butt rub, I may sneak into mom's computer and email you the presentation ;)