Nov 10 2009
More P4C
Went on another excellent Philosophy for Children course on Friday and Saturday. It was about putting into practice what I had been introduced to during the previous course with Will Ord. We had three “enquiries” during the two days, where we had different techniques modelled to us, eg of starters, generating questions, thinking time and reflections. Many of us had had a brief intro to P4C before. It was a really nice group; I hope we can continue to share ideas for stimulii etc.
I have tried out some of the techniques with two classes this week so far. I read The Gruffalo to my years 9s. A few said they weren’t babies, but others obviously enjoyed it. Then each student shared a word that the story made them think of: scary, big, ugly, funny, stinky, strong. We then looked for links between these words: strong and scary, ugly and scary, big and strong. Then we moved on to formulating questions: a few students asked questions using the linked ideas. Eventually, using our felt tip pens, we voted, and chose the question, “Why, if you’re strong, are you scared?” (Or, why might a strong person feel scared?”) I thought this was quite an insightful question on behalf of my students (this is a lower ability set), and would have been interested in seeing how the conversation would have continued if we had had more time. As it was, there was some discussion relating to people using intelligence to scare others and hinting at fear of the unknown, although not quite in so many words.
Today, I decided on the spur of the moment to carry out an enquiry relating to abortion with my year 11 class. Some interesting questions, but in this case the time taken to generate the questions might have been better spent simply starting a discussion of my own choosing more related to the exam topics. Interesting to observe and evaluate these different situations. Am hoping to run an enquiry tomorrow with my year 8s; they were not quite ready today but I did go over some of the ground rules with them. I’ll see!
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
I have a Google Alert on “Philosophy for Children” which brought me to your page. It’s interesting you say you thought the questioning time with your 11s might have been better spent getting into a question you gave.
I sometimes think we can get a bit precious in P4C about following through all the stages. I still sometimes use philosophical stories like the one’s in Stephen Law’s Philosophy Files, and those discussions can be very rich – the questions have been thoroughly road-tested. There would be something missing if that’s all you did, but half and half pupil questions and ones chosen by the teacher to cover required topics seems a good pragmatic balance.
If you aren’t on http://www.p4c.com I would recommend it, by the way (it’s not my website so I don’t feel I’m spamming your blog). Lots of interesting discussions and good resources.
Good luck with your Year 8s!