Poster Project

Recently asked my high school class to do a bit of research - we had been studying about countries, the nationalities of those countries and the languages spoken there. Some of the lads started shouting out names like "Ronaldo", "Beckham", and "Ichiro", and I quickly got the impression there was a well-spring of latent knowledge & interest to push the boat out a bit.

A teacher is always taking a bit of a risk asking students to produce unstructured work. A 'mistake' I made years ago with my refugee students in Thailand was to ask them "How did you get here?". Obviously, each story was shocking; reading 50 or so made me think long and hard about what I was trying to do as a teacher and how little I had to complain about. I recently re-read some of their accounts when I was sorting through boxes of old stuff at my brother's place in Australia - still very harrowing.

Anyway. Rie & I asked our students to produce a poster highlighting a particular country. We suggested a couple of websites, and we brainstormed ideas as to what they might include. As you can see from the postings below, some of them really got their teeth into it. Which is the best poster? You decide - there's a poll on the right, so please take a second to cast your vote. (And by all means post a comment under them.)