My second prac experience was at Calen State School with a composite grade 3 / 4

Yet again, another rich and fantastic experience.  This school is very much a country school that catered for pre-school to grade 12.  In the class that I was with there were only a few girls and the main number being made up of boys.

Through the inspiration of this class a unit of work was created - "Operation Pocahontas - Stopping Jack from making a Giant mess of the whole world."

The story of Jack and the beanstalk received a working over as I completely changed the scenario from one beanstalk to millions that just kept growing wild.

The object was to teach cause and effect when introducing a foriegn species.

Lots and lots of fun was had as after the children had heard and enjoyed the story - Jack himself turned up at school to be interviewed by the students with a microphone that was magically plugged into nothing.

Often the students would ask me, "Is Jack coming today?"  Of course Jack was just me with a daggy hat on and a stuffed Toyota chook under my arm.

Jack's tracter takes a beating from those beanstalks.

The students, who were mostly farmer's children, were able to explore the cause and effect of their own environment and reflect on practices done in the past and also reflect on attitudes that help or hinder our local endangered species.  With the fun of the dopey, doin-it-all-wrong character of Jack, they could critically reflect without feeling personally attacked.