Intermediate Lesson I (3rd-5th Years) on Potions

Professor Fawcett

July 14, 2011 1:43 PM

Intermediate Lesson I (3rd-5th Years) by Professor Fawcett

Tiredness radiated through John's bones, making them almost ache and feel brittle, older than usual. It was an exercise in discipline to not pinch the bridge of his nose or press his temples against a building headache.

There had been a time, as recently as when most of the students' parents were students, when one of those occasional nights where sleep was entirely necessary but refused unconditionally to come would not have been too much of a hardship for him. He had always thought of himself as one of those people who did his best work at night, in fact, when he'd been a more active academic; in the past few years of getting back into things, he'd told himself it was merely a quirk of scheduling that had him working around classes and going to bed by half past eleven. Two nights at a Muggle hospital, though, were of a different character, and he finally had to admit: he was just getting old.

Not that you could tell it to talk to his father's nurses. He'd slipped up and admitted he was grown when Scotty was born, and though Scott, like all soap stars and most Squibs, had just enough magic to age more slowly than most Muggles, he was public enough for one of those women to be a fan who knew how old Scott actually was. And even with Dad at 93 to support the idea of them being some long-lived Muggles, the idea that Scott's brother was in the close neighborhood of seventy had attracted some comment. He'd been vaguely worried someone was going to bring up genetic testing and cloning and all those other things from Scott's show by the time Dad was released and they all went back to work, John a little shaken by the reminder of how much older the lack of magic made his father and brother and likely even very magically weak mother. The next time he took a day off, it would most likely be for his father's funeral; when they buried his brother, in three or four decades, he would likely be taken by all but the superfans of Ken and Katherine, who'd be getting scarce by then, for the younger brother.

A strange thought, and one which had lingered since his return and was now informing his plans for an Advanced lesson. Never let it be said that John Fawcett passed up a chance to use preexisting circumstances for learning. Now, though, he had the Imtermediates.

"Good day, class," he said, adjusting his glasses where they'd slipped during the roll call. "I hope you did not find my brief absence too painful." He'd left them with some Gray woman, with straightforward brewing assingments divided by grade level. With a Carey who never voluntarily worked at grade level in the class, he was somewhat concerned for his safety after that, but was counting on her being a Teppenpaw to save him. "Unfortunately, this throws our schedule off a bit, so today, you're going to play a review game to prepare for your upcoming exam. The details, I leave up to you, though I ask that you write down a copy of your rules and give them to me by the end of class.

"You will be quizzing each other over Potions knowledge - recipes, brewing procedures, ingredient properties, principles and laws of potion-making, safety, the potions history we've covered in this unit - you see where this is going. Fifth years, you may wish to go back further, across your entire Potions careers, in preparation for the CATS, as might everyone else - I assure you, third years, they're closer than they seem, and you'll all start seeing practice papers more often after midterm. I have a number of boards you may use as well - you might play some where moves forward and back are determined by correct or incorrect answers and obstacles mean an extra question with a greater penalty, or chess where a question must be answered correctly for a turn to be taken and correctly answering a question the opponent missed means two turns, or...use your imaginations." He was talking too much. "So long as you agree on your rules or rule modifications. Get started."

OOC: Standard posting rules apply for posts to get credit, detailed, creative posts get more points, etc. Have fun!

Subthreads:

Learning is fun! by James Owen

0 Professor Fawcett Intermediate Lesson I (3rd-5th Years) 0 Professor Fawcett 1 5

James Owen

July 20, 2011 9:20 AM

Learning is fun! by James Owen

The actual teacher of a class didn't make much difference to James. He preferred some to others, but generally speaking it was the content that interested him or not; the way it was presented made little difference. Therefore although he acknowledged Professor Fawcett's return, he had no emotional response to it either way. Yet by the end of his instruction, the third year was actually finding himself drawn to the professor, who had suggested they spend the class inventing a learn game. James loved academic board games, and was always creating his own math games to teach to his family. He hadn't invented one to review potions before, but he was keen to give it a go. the only unfortunate aspect of this was that he would have to work with someone else to create the game in order to be able to play it in class, but James had gotten better recently at working with others. It might be just about tolerable.

"I have lots of ideas about how we could do this," he said to the student nearby with whom James would probably end up working. His first thought was that there should be bonus questions, which, if answered correctly, allowed the student to progress further along the board, or maybe to collect tokens. The game could become very complicated - which James would prefer to an easy, linear game - but its final form would depend on the preferences of his partner, as well as his own. "I've made board games before," he boasted his experience at this assignment, sure it would bolster his partner's faith in his abilities to succeed in this class assignment. "Have you?"

Admittedly even Jade - the youngest Owen - had given her best at making a board game, but it had been very boring to play, and not at all academically oriented. Josephine had made some interesting games using words and letters as her focus - she was best at words; he was best at numbers, logic, facts, and trivia - but she was always far more interested in making the game aesthetically pleasing than enjoyable to play. James liked to focus on making sure the game held an element of challenge, and so the winner was the person best at beating the challenge, not simply favored by chance. "We should ask each other review questions and collect tokens for correct answeres," he suggested, "and the winner is the person with the most tokens, not just the person who gets to the end of the board first." Rolling a die to land on high numbers was not a skill worthy of credit in James' opinion.

0 James Owen Learning is fun! 168 James Owen 0 5

Daisy Thorpe

July 28, 2011 12:52 AM

I agree with you by Daisy Thorpe

Daisy was a little disappointed, but not really surprised, to not get much of an explanation for why Fawcett had been gone. Adults seldom shared information when they didn't have to.

He looked a little tired, though, so she guessed it either hadn't been good or had at least involved a lot of traveling. The assignment could mean he didn't want to deal with them today, though Fawcett being Fawcett could mean it was just an attempt to push them, make them be creative, and the system, from what she'd heard at home listening to people talk about officials, being the system, might want them all to do better, which could mean more review - stupid, to Daisy's mind, since the people who were going to learn already had and repetition just wasted time they could use to learn more things, but that wasn't the kind of thing you were supposed to say out loud.

There was, she concluded, no telling what was going on. She just noticed it all anyway, for practice. She tried to do that, hoping to get better with more practice.

The lesson wasn't something she knew what to think about, either, though. Were they going to be graded on how hard the game was, or how hard the game questions were, or was this one almost a free day, or...? She had never really done a lesson like this and wasn't sure what to think of it.

James Owen, though, seemed to know exactly what he thought of it. He was talking with the authority of a professional game maker. She guessed there were far worse and more flagitious things to be, and she was happier working with someone who knew what he was doing and was enjoying himself anyway. "No, sorry," she said. "But I can handle it."

She nodded her agreement to his idea of there being more to it than just reaching the end of the board first. "All right," she said. "Should we take away tokens for wrong answers, do you think?" Daisy didn't expect many of those when the contestants were her and an Aladren, but it was something that would need to be accounted for in case one of them had a stupid moment, and maybe for the professor's sake in evaluating their game afterward even if they didn't.

0 Daisy Thorpe I agree with you 177 Daisy Thorpe 0 5

James

July 28, 2011 10:15 AM

Then we're off to a good start by James

James' partner was a girl in his year, in Crotalus House - the same House as Ryan, Eliza, and Niffler Girl - whose name James couldn't remember. She ought not to take it as a personal slight - he had a poor memory for people's names, and didn't think he'd had any memorable encounter with her to cement her name in his memory. She didn't object to his token idea, though, so he was content to work with her for the class. he also thought it was appropriate to work with someone in his own year group for this particular venture, as the other years would have idfferent slightly in what they'd each learned in the subject in total. "Should we take away tokens for wrong answers, do you think?" the girl suggested.

"If you like," James replied, starting to make notes on their review game. It made sense that if they gave correct answers to earn tokens, incorrect answers should be taken away. "How about the option to pass on a question?" James liked to be through. If the option was there to pass, an unsure person could play it safe and not give an answer, thus not risk losing their tokens. Though from the other perpective, lack of knowledge should be punished regardless of its being stated or not. Both ways had their merits.

"Shall we have different question categories, and different colors on the board or something to show you which question you get asked?" he suggested next. "The categories could be broken down into ingredients, preparation, properties... or whatever else you think works," he shrugged. He was happy to compromis on the details, so long as he was happy with the game in general.

"Oh, and I'm sorry but I can't think of your name," he told his partner. He'd written his own name at the top of his notes and hesitated with his quill poised ready to write hers when an answer was given.

0 James Then we're off to a good start 0 James 0 5