"Ah ha" moment

Today has been one of those rare yet wonderful days were I've seen an "ah ha" moment form for my students. I simply love these days. We've been learning about Africa and all the many problems that the people deal with on a daily basis. Yesterday they learned about AIDS, which just so happens to be a wonderful lesson as well, but I'm writing about today. So in talking about AIDS I guide them to the conclusion that to be able to talk about ideas for helping the problem we must have more understanding about each country and to do so we must be able to learn about human development and being able to measure that development. Oh I am excited all over again. Yes I'm a geography nerd. So in any case we discussed what a "good life" might include and how what we value, someone else in a different culture might value differently depending on where they live and who they are. I must stop here and say that this discussion included a great deal of participation, which is always great. If you were looking in my class today you would see productive chaos. Yes this truly happens. They may all have something to say in the discussion but when it came time to write their responses all were quite and actively writing. Oh what delight. We went on to discuss how to measure development. For example the literacy rate can be used to help measure knowledge in a society. I love when students have to think out side their knowledge box for new information. We concluded with realizing how many countries in Africa are developing and comparing population pyramids. So to follow up we will look at current development in Africa and the issues that many countries face with improving the lives of Africans. This will hopefully lead them to be able to come up with their own improvement plan for the growth of human development. It will be exciting to see how this goes. I can only hope they will have another "ah ha" moment.

I truly hope that I did not bore you with my exciting lesson plan about human development. I was just so excited about the productive chaos going on in the classroom today I just had to share.