Drop Bear Bears and Bunyips

Many years ago I taught my Year Prep/1 class a song about drop bear bears by Jennie Flack. It's a simple song and I still remember all of the lyrics:

A drop bear bear is a round bear bear,

A shiny-eyed, peepy eyed round bear bear

It's very hard to tell if he's the right way up

Until he lands... plop on your shoulder. 

There's a few more verses to it that I can sing for you but I don't want to distract you. At about the same time I read "The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek" to my students. The book is about a 'creature' that's  very large and muddy and as it heaves itself on to the bank of Berkeley's Creek it wonders; 'What am I ?' 'What do I look like ?' A platypus told him he was a bunyip. But he had to go and find out what a bunyip was. 

After singing the song and reading the book, we had to go searching for bunyips and drop bear bears. The children looked up, squealed when they thought a drop bear might drop on them and imagined bunyips hiding in fallen logs and behind bushy scrubs. It was  lot of fun and I wonder if those children, who are now adults, still remember those times. 

The reason that memory came to mind was that I've been teaching my Year 5/6 class about ballads and other types of poetry. I read them "The Man From Snowy River" and found a modern ballad called, "Space Cows and Green Cheese". I must admit I was surprised when a student teacher on placement admitted he had never heard of bunyips and when one of my students thought the idea of a drop-bear bear came from the US who called a kind of crazy looking koala a drop bear.

This afternoon, I came home and made green jelly, after buying shaving cream, hair gel and mayonnaise for a science experiment my class will do to explore the 3 states of matter; solids, liquids and gases. I think the content I teach my students these days is sometimes more advanced and 'technical' than it used to be many years ago. I don't remember teaching about solids, liquids and gases and although I taught them how to write a few years ago (and then some) we focused more on poetry and narratives rather than persuasive and explanation type genres.

No matter what the content is, it is important that the teacher teach it in an engaging way and models for the students, the fun in learning. Be creative with your students. Make a mess. Laugh and learn. Instil a love of learning so that long after the classroom doors have closed, your students choose to go on learning.