I'm also in a class back home that discusses teaching methods and assessments. The class is online and predominantly discussion based. After sharing my plans with the class about giving the students so much freedom, I got the sense that some were apprehensive of the plan. Some, not all. That planted a little seed in my mind that questioned whether or not I should have been clearer and guided the students with more direct instruction.
The students have had about a week and a half to prepare for the activity. I teach on Tuesdays and Fridays so in the past three classes I've given them anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes to discuss and plan out what they wanted to do each day.
The groups are formed from the results of a personality test. There is green, gold, orange and blue. Green are analytical, gold like rules, orange are spontaneous and competitive, and blue are in tune with their feelings and like close relationships with people. It worked out where the teams each had students from the different countries in it with minor adjustments. There are only two students from America and both were gold so we had to move one to another color. These colors have dictated teams for everything we've done this month. It's been great because they all value different things and often have different perspectives and methods.
The activities were supposed to take about 30 minutes each, but I expected a lot longer. I was right. The activities took up our entire morning with about 10 minutes to spare. Our morning class is from 9AM-12:20PM.
The gold group played the traditional "Never have I ever" to discuss ethical issues and how people change over time by learning from their mistakes. Some mistakes we made in our youth we would never choose to make again and it is because we have learned from them (hopefully). However, they are still part of what makes us who we are.
The orange team went next with an incredibly elaborate game that resembled the board game "Risk". They had rules, action points, and a map that they drew on the board for the rest of the teams to conquer. They asked if I would like to play and obviously I couldn't help but partake. The rules were a bit flawed because if you took over a country all of their men and territories became your own, so the first team to take over a country had a tremendous advantage versus the one remaining country. In spite of that, the game forced each team to strategize, make decisions and react to other players (external factors), which may mean altering their initial strategy. The teams really got into it and it was a huge success.
The blue team thought they had a simple and easy idea that required people to hold each others hands with their eyes closed. After they closed their eyes they had to form a shape that the blue team called out. Shapes consisted of squares, triangles, pentagons, etc... This was a lot more difficult than what the team originally thought and teams became perfectionists, wanting to make sure their feet and hands were appropriately placed. This worked on verbal communication and trusting the information that is given to you by your teammates. They altered the activity by allowing the team to identify a leader who could give verbal commands while keeping their eyes open, but wouldn't be part of the shape with their team. This made them even more of perfectionists, measuring out distances with their feet, etc... to make sure everything was equal.
The last team, the green team, had a great activity where they made a game utilizing PowerPoint. I'm not sure if they are aware of the game Taboo or Pyramid but that's pretty much what the game was modeled after. They had leaders of history and would give clues every 15 seconds or so, allowing the teams to guess. They used clues that were based off the content in class, such as "Referent Leader" or "Theory X". It was a big hit and they did it right.
It was funny because the teams played out their personalities perfectly in the activities. The gold team really wanted to understand the rules and were offended when they didn't understand them clearly or if they deemed them flawed. The orange team was very competitive and always wanted to win. The green team was very strategic (they won risk!). The blue team had a good time and thoroughly enjoyed the class.
Freedom was definitely a good thing today. Enjoy a few pictures of the day's activities.
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