Reflections: Mount Never Rest

This week I had a pretty successful lesson concerning Mount Everest, which then segued to a general lesson about teamwork. The students in this class are generally around intermediate-mid to an intermediate-high speaking and listening level (reading and writing aren’t as observed as closely).

The previous class I had them craft trivia questions (such as “what is the largest country in the world?”, “what is the fastest animal?” etc., which they then used to test their partners). This class I picked up from there by refreshing them about question structures and then posing a new question on the board “What is the most dangerous sport in the world?” I then asked students to discuss with each other what they thought the deadliest sports were. I modeled the reply I wanted on the WB as “I think the most dangerous sport in the world is ______ , because ___________” I got many answers such as bungee-jumping, rugby, jetskiing, but I stopped when one student announced climbing dangerous mountains like Mount Everest. Now, I’m not proud of this, but I have to admit I’m not sure that extreme mountaineering is actually the most dangerous sport. One student said “Russian roulette” so that threw a monkey-wrench into my plan. The point was in trying to get them to think critically and initiate some interactions with their peers and myself, so what’s the harm in a white lie every now and then? At least that’s what I tell myself every time my girlfriend asks me the “dress question” (if you’re reading this, I’m joking. Seriously! You look fine). 

I then asked some general questions about Everest, such as what percentage of people who climb it die (10%) and what are some of the reasons they die. They didn’t know the answers to these questions, so I played them a small clip on YouTube, which showed the scale of the mountain and visually demonstrated the dangers the climbers could encounter (such as hypothermia from the cold, altitude sickness and death from low oxygen levels, avalanches, falls, lack of food, etc). The visual scaffolding provided by this clip, helped them to come to the answers more easily. The dangers were never outright said, but by seeing the crevices, hearing about the “dead zone” near the top and observing how the main climber in the clip had basically turned purple, they could guess at the proper answers.

This then led to teamwork as I asked the students to think of how someone could overcome these dangers. Could you climb the mountain alone or would you need a team? If you had a team, what would the jobs be of the team-members? They told me each member would fulfill a certain task; someone would bring the oxygen, someone would bring food, someone would bring shelter in the form of a tent and so on.

I then shifted gears and engaged in some personalization with them. “Have you climbed a mountain in Korea?”, “Did you go alone or with your family?” (of course no one climbed alone), “What did you bring?”, “What did your father do to help you when you were climbing?”, etc. Then after we had some dialogic discourse in the form of open, referential questions, and some great student-initiated IRF (finally!), I subtly shifted the questioning to teamwork in general; “in what other situations have you been on a team?”, “how is working on a team different from working alone?”, “if you were on  a team, what was your job and why were you important to the team?” The students discussed being in study-groups or playing on soccer teams and we had a very lively, productive class with a lot of student-led discussion. Probably one of my most successful classes so far (unfortunately, murphy’s law dictates I film my so-so classes and never have the forethought to film my great classes). It was productive enough that I didn’t get through half of what I had to have covered, so next class will be the dreaded catch-up, the one downside of an otherwise excellent class.