We listened to Gene Kelly telling the classic story of The Shoemaker and the Elves last week in class. The idea was to give the students a taste of old fashioned "listening" -- with no video or illustrations . We talked about what things were like before tv, the Internet, DVDs, etc.
The story was a big hit with some of the kids; others could not have cared less. It was interesting to see the diversity of attention spans and curiosity/willingness to try to "use their imaginations" to "see" the story.
Audio Stream
After they listened to the story we discussed story telling. That lead to the narrator, Gene Kelly. None of the children had heard of him so we went on a quest. We walked through the school conducting a survey of the teachers. The question asked was, "What was Gene Kelly famous for?" (Not a grammatically correct question, shame on me).
The results became a lesson on fractions. The resultant reduced fraction told an interesting story. 7/8ths of the teachers had heard of Gene Kelly and said that he was famous for his dancing. 1/2 of those added singing and acting to his claims to fame. It was a cool lesson extender. Next week we take a few minutes to watch Gene Kelly dance in some clips I am putting together. Here is one:
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