Game day 12 90 mins.
Objectives:
Students will learn to trust their own ideas and use them in brainwriting.
Bellwork. 10 mins.
Put the following excerpt up on the board.
How does working in groups contribute to original thinking?
You know, if you look at brainstorming research, we’ve got, now, almost half a century of experiments and field studies. What you see is that if you take five students and put them in a brainstorming group together, you will get fewer ideas and less original ideas than if you had taken those same five students and let them work independently, in separate rooms, by themselves.
And teachers find this maddening when they learn about it, because it goes against the idea of teaching teamwork and two heads are better than one. But there a few things that happen that make brainstorming groups less than the sum of their parts.
One is called production blocking, and it’s the basic idea that we can’t all talk at once. And as a result, some ideas and some students just don’t get heard. Two, there’s ego threat, where kids are nervous about looking stupid or foolish, so they hold back on their most original ideas. And then, three is conformity. One or two ideas get raised that are popular. Everyone wants to jump on the majority bandwagon, as opposed to bringing in some radical, different ways of thinking.
You put kids in separate rooms, what you get is all of the ideas on the table, and then you can bring the group together for what the group does best, which is the wisdom of crowds. The evaluating. The idea selecting. The figuring out which of these ideas really has potential to be, not only novel, but also useful.
And I think that’s where you teach kids to work together effectively in groups. You say that individual idea generation works together really well, but then the group can come together to figure out which ideas to really bet on.
That technique is actually called brain writing. Instead of brainstorm. It’s a great term and I think we should do more of it.
Ask the students to read at least the two bold sections. For older students they can read the whole excerpt.
Pregame 40 mins.
Read the two problems for today, and have students come up with their own ideas of how to solve each of the problems. (Read one problem, give them 5 minutes to brainstorm either writing, drawing, doing math etc.)
Problems for today:
Elections Crisis 23
Today you will all hold elections for the post of Prime Minister of each country. Each member of the game will cast secret ballots as to who should hold the post for each country. This could become a coup attempt, re-election, or just a change of leadership. You decide.
Racism Crisis 24
Filios is a country that has a lot of diversity. There are the native Filitians, but then there are also immigrants, legal and illegal, brought there for work and those who have come to make a better life. There have been complaints by immigrants and those who are not Filitians of racism from the Filitian community. The government would like to create a program to combat racism.
Then have the groups come together, respectfully listen to all of the solutions. Ask questions of each student about their solutions (further explanation, questioning meaning, etc.)
Then have students develop proposals to the whole class. Give them poster paper and have them draw and write to explain their best solutions.
Game: 30 mins.
Set game timer and click “End Day” on your website.
Let people start to negotiate.
Conclusion: (10 mins.)
Did having each person come up with solutions beforehand help in solving the problems in creative ways? Write what you think and defend it with examples from today and past days.