One of our semester 1 reading stories this year was Cliff
Hanger by Jean Craighead George. In the story a young boy, called Axel, has to
use all his skill and courage as a rock climber to rescue his dog who is
stranded high on a ledge. To add to the drama of the story, there is a
thunderstorm approaching.
Here at Wagor Bilingual Academy we have two artificial
climbing walls built up against the face of the school buildings looking onto
Spanish Square. We decided that this would be a great opportunity to introduce
the students to the climbing walls and to give them a taste of mountain
climbing without having to leave the campus. In addition, the students would learn
about some of the equipment used in rock climbing.
One climbing wall is about ten feet high and
the other is about thirty feet high. We decided for first time climbers it
would be best to use the ten foot wall.
The rock climbing class was carried out during one of the PE
periods. Each Reading Class Teacher attended the class to offer support and
encouragement to their students. The class started with warm up exercises which
are very important when doing an activity such as rock climbing. Then, the
Chinese PE teacher explained the safety rules and the do’s and don’ts of using
the climbing wall and the equipment.
After that, the Reading Teacher talked through the climbing
equipment and some of the technical terms which are used in the story so that
the students could more easily relate what they were doing at the climbing wall
to the Cliff Hanger story.
The students were then allowed to “free climb” (climb without
equipment) the wall two at a time. In the Cliff Hanger story, the main
character has to climb the last ten feet of the mountain down to the ground
without being tied to a safety rope. He had to free climb! The students were
able to imagine what it would be like to climb the mountain, just like Axel did
when saving his dog.
With a story like Cliff Hanger it may be difficult for some
students to understand what it might be like to rock climb, but after their
experience on the climbing wall, they definitely had a better appreciation of
this very exciting sport!
The students all loved the rock climbing
experience and, who knows, maybe it has inspired some of them to try it for
real one day.
三年級攀岩體驗課程
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