I'm a huge fan of Dave Burgess and his "Teach Like A Pirate" book/philosophy. The last 2 years have seen me incorporating some of his techniques in the first few days of classes. Get the students involved in out of the box thinking, developing rapport and relationships and unleashing their inner creativity. Because of a suggestion in his book, I've had my high school students using play dough to create small works of art to describe themselves (or to create an object that best defines a philosopher/political thinker). My absolute favorite one is his 3rd day activity...Survivor Island. The basic premise is that you have been involved in an at-sea plane crash, and have managed to pull 10 survivors into one of the life rafts and made it to a deserted island. As luck would have it, a rescue helicopter arrives but can only take you and 5 other people. Your job (and that of my students) is to decide which 5 people will make it back home and which 5 will remain on the island, perhaps never to be rescued. As a starting point, I used the file created by Ben Brazeau on his website (timetravelingteach.weebly.com/blog/teach-like-a-pirate-days-2-and-3) .
I tweaked it a little bit and used it to focus on ideology (our topic for Grade 12 Social here). How did students justify their decisions? Were they more focused on what was best for those who had to remain or who "deserved" to go home? How did they decide what 'deserving' meant? Like Ben mentions in his blog post, the murderer often causes quite a bit discussion. Does leaving him behind presume that he is going to murder those remaining with him? (I have to wonder though why I made the murderer a him...would it matter if I had put no gender, or used a female gender?) I saw students engage in deep conversations about the nature of human beings (nature vs nurture, primarily good vs primarily bad). Students bring their own life experiences and perspectives to this kind of activity which often takes the reasoning into territory I hadn't thought of. This ends up being a student centered conversation, and for the most part I find I blend into the background as the students have passionate (although respectful) arguments on the merits of their choices.
The really fantastic part is how this spills over into subsequent lessons. Once I started using this as an opening day activity, I found that students generally become more willing to open up and discuss their ideas in future classes. They learn the skills of compromise, how to really listen to each other and how to defend their position while remaining open to new ideas and perspectives. Other staff members have seen this in use and incorporate it into their lessons. One teacher walked into my room and saw our giant chart on the board and was intrigued. He took a copy of the list home and did some more tweaking and thinking on it. I love it!
Thank you Dave Burgess for sharing this idea in the first place and thank you to Ben Brazeau for putting his version of the survivor list out there.
I tweaked it a little bit and used it to focus on ideology (our topic for Grade 12 Social here). How did students justify their decisions? Were they more focused on what was best for those who had to remain or who "deserved" to go home? How did they decide what 'deserving' meant? Like Ben mentions in his blog post, the murderer often causes quite a bit discussion. Does leaving him behind presume that he is going to murder those remaining with him? (I have to wonder though why I made the murderer a him...would it matter if I had put no gender, or used a female gender?) I saw students engage in deep conversations about the nature of human beings (nature vs nurture, primarily good vs primarily bad). Students bring their own life experiences and perspectives to this kind of activity which often takes the reasoning into territory I hadn't thought of. This ends up being a student centered conversation, and for the most part I find I blend into the background as the students have passionate (although respectful) arguments on the merits of their choices.
The really fantastic part is how this spills over into subsequent lessons. Once I started using this as an opening day activity, I found that students generally become more willing to open up and discuss their ideas in future classes. They learn the skills of compromise, how to really listen to each other and how to defend their position while remaining open to new ideas and perspectives. Other staff members have seen this in use and incorporate it into their lessons. One teacher walked into my room and saw our giant chart on the board and was intrigued. He took a copy of the list home and did some more tweaking and thinking on it. I love it!
Thank you Dave Burgess for sharing this idea in the first place and thank you to Ben Brazeau for putting his version of the survivor list out there.
survivor_island_day_1_activities.docx |