I can use a ROCK and teach an amazing lesson… or can I?

Can you make a lesson where your only prop is a rock? Yes? No? If yes, what would that lesson be? If no, why not?

How important are materials in your class. How important are flashy/ super duper handouts/materials in your class? If you had nothing but a rock to use in your lesson, would you be overwhelmed and have a meltdown, or would your creative juices just flow? Would that make for an amazing lesson or a flop?

I often wonder,

How important is the material we use in the classroom? Do they make or break a lesson?

So, I have rambled quite a bit (bear with me folks, if you have been following my blog for a while, you will know that I haven’t rambled for quite a bit, so let me be) and I am going to get to my point.

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I think that materials are important, but they are not the most important part of the lesson. If the material you use in class is bad/poor, you can still teach a good lesson. You could have the most amazing materials, the most up to date technology and still have a bad lesson. Is the material to blame? Are you (the teacher) to blame? Are the students to blame? Who is responsible for a bad lesson? A good one?

I think (eye roll coming), the teacher makes for a good lesson. It doesn’t have to be a well-seasoned teacher, it just has to be a teacher who has ideas and “has it”. You know, the teacher gene…….

Back to the ROCK

So, let’s challenge ourselves, shall we?

How would you use a rock in your class?

Idea 1

Ask your students:

Imagine the rock is a desert island and you need to live on it, what would you take with you? You go through how to write a plan for a story, the features of a story and so on.

Idea 2

Write a poem about a rock. Again, you go through the features of a poem and then get them cracking on.

Idea 3

One rock for each student, they draw faces on them and write the script for a play. The rocks are the characters. Again, go through what needs to be in a play, features of direct speech and so on.

Idea 4

Think about words that have to do with rocks. You can look at all kinds of vocabulary, (derivatives etc), make sentences, write a story, find adjectives to describe a rock, find the opposites of these adjectives, and so on.

Idea 5

EAP twist….. Your students take part in a seminar, they have to have arguments, good arguments. When a student finishes analysing their own argument, they hand the rock to another student who needs to provide a counterargument or something along those lines. All arguments need to be as solid as a …. rock.

Idea 6

Your turn.

How would you use a rock in your classroom?

Where do you stand on this topic. I am counting on you PLN.

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Till next time…..

3 thoughts on “I can use a ROCK and teach an amazing lesson… or can I?”

Hi Joanna

Thank you for the great list of simple ideas! I don’t know if this could be the whole lesson but it could definitely be a solid (dogme-style) activity. Idea 6 to add: public speaking skill exercise. Students need to speak about the rock for about 60 secs. If they don’t know what to say, they need to hold a pause, fill out the silence, tell a joke, etc. The main idea is to keep the listeners engaged and focused. I originally heard this idea as a part of public speaking skill course but it was about a chair. I think it would work with a rock, too!

Idea 7: maybe students could use their rocks to build something, or draw a picture (rather, a collage) and then discuss how ‘rocks group rock/matter’, etc.

This is a good exercise!
Zhenya

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