Hi all,
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Thanks for a very enjoyable (though rather intense!) couple of days. I really enjoyed everyone’s company and enthusiasm for the subject.
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Several people asked about how best to cascade some of the learning to colleagues. If you have a one-hour twilight, I’d suggest limiting it to two cycles of experiencing a technique, then applying it. The PowerPoint to accompany this plan can be downloaded here.
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1st Cycle: Starting positions
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Run Starting Positions as described in the book (perhaps using a circle rather than two lines). Here are some choices of question sequences:
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2s: Which rule is more important: be kind, or do your best?
4s: Should children create school rules?
8s: Could God change his mind about what was good?
2s: What’s better: being the Prime Minister, or a King/Queen?
4s: Is voting needed for a democracy?
8s: Is democracy the same as decision by the majority?
2s:Does being ‘based on a true story’ make a story more interesting?
4s:‘This statement is false.’ Is it?
8s: If you know something, does that mean it is true?
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After the third question, get people to stand to show what they really think, and open it up into a whole group discussion. Mention that it’s now a “Thinker’s Game” called Dividing Line. Don’t forget to hide behind people and have them choose the next speaker, so that you can model going into orbit from Take A Back Seat.
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Then you can get everyone sat down again, and share the three main principles with them, referring back to how Get Moving, Y-Questions and Take A Back Seat all feature in Starting Positions.
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Now get them to come up with their own sequence of three questions for a class coming up this week. Remind them the questions should be ones you could argue either way, and should start light and get more challenging.
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2nd Cycle: Evilometer (download)
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Put up the Thinkers’ Games slide with the four principles. Remind them they’ve already done a Thinkers’ Game (the Dividing Line at the end of the Starting Positions exercise).
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Refer to each stage as it happens
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Think - in this case, about what makes something good or evil.
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Commit - by making your thinking physical (in this case laying out the cards)
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Justify - defending your choices to other groups
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Reflect - and show if you’ve change your mind by moving the cards again.
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Make sure that when one group is defending their views, they are talking to the other groups and not you, again modelling taking a back seat.
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Now pick a concept and create/imagine an -ometer together. Could be about beauty, lies (from most to least acceptable), examples of friendship, reliability of sources of information.
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Finally, get them to think about children who are playground confident, classroom shy, do the boiling down to one word and calling those out, and then make connections between those ideas and the three principles on the final slide.
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Below, you can listen to the set of "Spreadability" audio files - my advice on training other teachers, based on years of doing it as a day-job!
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Best wishes,
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Jason