teaching.... its a circus?

The images above and below were absolutely honestly taken during my ICT seminar this afternoon.

When we arrived, our lecturer (pictured above, she's the one in the hat) was standing outside the door, handing out tickets to the circus. When we were all there, she opened the door. From the ceiling tiles hung bright coloured material, creating a canopy through which we entered the classroom. Inside, the tables were arranged in clusters around a "circus ring" in the middle. 2 bright parachutes formed the shape - one spread on the floor and one hung from the ceiling. Around the edge, red and silver shiny paper hung in strips creating the edges of the big top. On the floor in the ring were juggling balls, clown outfits, diabolos and various other circus-related items. On the interactive whiteboard, a series of circus images faded in and out of one another while circus music played. And our tutor, Sue Crosson, was dressed as a clown.

The whole lesson was to get us to think about cross-curricular teaching, how to plan for it and how to use ICT to support and enrich it. Scary at first but once we got into it it was great - really inspiring and creative.

I'm a creative person anyway and would love the task of transforming a room like that (not sure about the outfit though!) so it was really encouraging to find that sort of experience in the middle of an academic PGCE course!! Hurrah!