The Priory School Visitation - Fri. Oct. 7

Friday was our Vocational day and I (Dave) went to The Priory School in Shrewsbury, a year 7 - 11 school. It is a very progressive school with many activities going on.  Firstly, I sat in on an administration meeting with the head teacher (Candy Garbett) and staff. What a professional team she has. I attended 3 classes - a year 9 English class, a year 10 Science class and a year 7 math class. Loads of fun.
   In the English class I had trouble figuring out what was going on until I relized that some the students were role playing the book's characters. Neat idea. She was trying to teach what empathy was and it fooled me.
   The Science teacher was reviewing heat transfer, conduction, convection and got into a discussion of home heating and insulation. The students were quite interested when I spoke of our levels of insulation and cold -40 temps.
   The math guy was a younger teacher with lots of Zip. A version of Murray Hart. He invited me to circulate and help, which of course I jumped at the opportunity. I even got up to the board and taught a bit. The topic was Surface area and the questions were to find the S.A. of a cuboid and then a 5 sided prism.  Most did OK with some help on the triangular bits needed. Like at home in neepawa they don't like to show their work, so I let one bright lad follow alon with a mistake I knew he made. Of course he had to start over since their was no work to follow. Did he learn the importance of showing work. Not likely, it will take a few more times of extra repetitions to learn that lesson.  Then the neat part was the final question (working backwards) Find the dimensions of a solid that gives a surface area of 100 sq. cm.  keeps the good kids busy. As they were leaving one lad asked about finding the radius of a shere of S.A = 100 sq. cm. I doubt he knows the formula but it proved that the lesson plan was a good one. Boy did I have fun.