ideas for teaching kids age 11-14?

[melkan]

Hi I am a new woodwork teacher at steienr school and have completed half a school year, I would like to come up with a couple of projects for the kids for a final projects and mini projects for easter and the summer...anyone teaching , got ideas?

[AnselmFraser]

We do one and two day short courses for children in the Summer months (we divide it into mornings only so the glue has time to set and we have time to secretly rectify things ! ) . We get them to make tables , chairs ,stools .....a simple design that you can make up , we make a sample with all of the measurements on it and then we do maticulous preperation (we usually just use pine ) , where by we cut everything to size apart from one leg and say two stretchers , if we do not do this then after the 9 hour stretch they do not have anything to take home , this is very much better then just getting them to make an egg rack . One of our easy projects is to make a chess board , they cut the veneer with sissors , older kids do it properly by using a knife and a straight edge and then put it in the veneer press . The first project is to make a wooden truck or car out of scrap bits and bought in wooden wheels . with imagination there is lots of stuff you can do .....

[whemand]

Just be gentle. And don’t assume that they can easily learn. And not because they tell you they understand the lesson doesn’t mean they do understand. Others just do that because the class will extend if they ask questions.

[VEK TOOLS]

It would depend what tools you have to make the products. Maybe some out door furniture for play grounds where they can do as a team to learn team work, bookshelfs for the library or classroom. Items they could look at school that they could maybe respect because they made it.

We have hired a few school leavers over the past 5 years & have found them to be missing some key principals in life like: common sense, team work & the major one respect...maybe the right activities in wood work could help