Opposites are attractive!

I'm working my way through the Open University MAST program and am currently looking at how inverse operations should be taught by thinking about them as "undoing" another operation.  This leads to a natural teaching approach which is to accompany any teaching with it's inverse or opposite.

Some topics seem to fit well.  Forces are almost always taught with a focus on push and pull.  Addition is usually taught alongside subtraction....that's when I start to get a bit stuck.  During the reaching of Literacy, maybe I should contrast vastly different genres:" How does this poster differ from a playscript?  What might you expect to find in a poem, but not in a recount?"

Then I got to thinking about my current unit on World War Two.  Maybe a study of the Nobel Peace Prize should accompany this history unit.  It would be a great Internet investigation, provide a wealth of Worldwide Geography and politics but could open up some fairly challenging topics for 8-9 year olds.  Famous characters such as Aung San Suu Kyi, Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela could form the backbone of research. Research could be simply structured around the who, what, where, when, why, which, how question word framework.

I think another approach would be to spend more time in thinking about how an English child's life differs now from during wartime.  Comparison often produces interesting reflections and gives a greater sense of meaning.

Opposites do seem to be quite attractive.