For developing communication skills, noticing how we communicate.
This is a simple way for a group that is meeting again after not meeting for several weeks or months to catch up on each other's activities. Like the Power Line and the Learning Interview, this activity involves making a simple shared chart that "bubbles up" individual experiences and, at the same time, enables you to see collective patterns of activity.
I learned this game from a fellow teacher in the Intensive English Learning Program at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, who played it as a child.
It's a pairs game (or chain game), where each player picks up from the previous player's contribution.
The joker starts the game, usually with the standard opening, "Unfortunately, I fell out of an airplane."
The next player continues the story, but switches the direction, "Fortunately, I had a parachute."
The joker (or a third player, if it is a chain), continues, "Unfortunately, the parachute had a hole in it."
(I learned this at Kani Club, the great "Yes, and..." improv group in Tokyo.)
This game, done in pairs, challenges the listener and the speaker alike to clarify the meaning of words and phrases used. Like all games it is, as Huizinga says, "pointless but significant." The fun is in the pointless interruption and unnecessary explanation. The significance is in the verification of mutual understanding of even the simplest terms.
The flow:
Hegel criticized "picture thinking" (vorstellung) as opposed to conceptual thinking, for some good reasons, but learning finds a good foothold in the creation, description, and analysis of pictures. I think this is because we find in drawings elements produced unconsciously, accidentally. And the drawings we create become objects in common -- something we can look at and to which we can refer in our conversation.
This simple activity can be the opening of a long investigation.
Adapted from "Broken Squares": Preparing Students for Group Work, from Practicing Collaborative Learning, Maryann Feola Castelucci and Peter Miller, College of Staten Island, CUNY, Dept of English, Speech and World Literature, Winter 1986
NEEDS WORK!!!!! LOST TEXT
Adapted from "Broken Squares": Preparing Students for Group Work, from Practicing Collaborative Learning, Maryann Feola Castelucci and Peter Miller, College of Staten Island, CUNY, Dept of English, Speech and World Literature, Winter 1986
[write up activity in context: how to develop group building skills when collaboration, participation, equality are your priorities, this is deep work, but can be very useful]
Summary:
It's an obvious idea, but seeing video of people using the People's Microphone, I decided to teach the technique in my English for Activists course and use it for language practice.
The Flow
A simple way to help people tell a story by providing prompts that keep the story moving and demand richer description and reflection.
Sitting in a circle, participants take turns telling a story with the facilitator (or as Boal says, the Joker) providing the links:
Participant 1: "My friend called me this morning and told me she was going to quit school..."
Joker: "because..."
Participant 2: "...she needs to make money and she feels like school has no meaning."
Joker: "But..."
...
This is a simple tool for equalizing participation in small group discussion and raising awareness of how much people speak. It's probably not original, but I can't recall seeing it before.
Flow:
In a smallish group (ten people) in one of my courses, I prepared a set of chits -- small rectangular pieces of card stock (cut up index cards) -- and gave each participant five chits (including me).
