Hey, the Amazing Race starts tonight!!

[MsUSA]

:party:

[xmas74]

1. I'm watching it.

My best friend is taping it to show on Fridays in her classroom. She did it last year as an experiment and the students geography scores went up dramatically so she plans to continue this year.

[philosophie_en_rose]

2. That's a great idea.

The Amazing Race only has traces of the nastiness in other reality shows. And those characters {Johnathan, Colin} are frowned upon.

Plus the good guys actually have a chance at winning, which is a good lesson for kids. I adored Uchenna & Joyce and Chip & Kim - good sports and good examples.

[xmas74]

3. And this season is a family edition.

It will be teams of four that are related. The minimum age is 8. There are a few w/ teens on there this season(my friend teaches spec ed. social sciences on the high school level-she hopes that seeing some of their peers will really pique their interest).
She watches and tapes the show on Tues, pulls up her maps and some simple research on Wed, passes out handouts about the countries they are in on Thurs as a homework assignment(they are to read the info over about the country) and on Fri they have a map of the countries waiting on their desk, along w/ a world map. Each Fri they have to mark the places that they travel to in the designated country on the map and they also have to trace the route that they travel on the world map. They write in the distance on the world map that they have travelled each episode and on Mon they hand in a paper (just a paragraph) about what they learned about that country or countries on the show(one paragraph for each country).
She also encourages them to watch Survivor each season at home. They discuss the geography of where they are playing at and each person picks one team member and writes about where they are from(so that they can focus on American geography too). She says that Survivor is the best thing to happen to her class. Ever since that show started airing she has been able to utilize it in her classes as a lesson on culture, geography and psychology-even basic civics. Her students are learning something and they don't even realize it.