Chaos Organized
Life skill related:
Managing learning
Methodology:
Cooperative learning
Subject:
Maths
Chemistry
Physics
Age/Grade:
11-14
Middle school
First grade high school
Timing:
45 min
Materials/suggestions
Materials needed: a rope, some sheets (half of A4) with pieces of the formulas needed to be memorized. Decide several formulas that the participants they have learn (or supposed to).
Try to not interrupt the participants when they go wrong, just be patient and respect the time of the exercise. Don’t be judgmental, try just to note the fact, don’t use words such as right or wrong, bad, and so on. Try to focus the participants on the results, say: “to don’t take it too personal”, but you have to understand how to improve the life skill related on the learning of the subject.
Description of the activity:
Divide it in single parts that will be placed on the sheets and put them on the floor in random order. Put the rope in order to make a space around all the sheets, to enclose them.
Now the participants must be all around the extern of the rope. The task is to touch with one foot and nothing else (with the body standing out from the inner space of the rope) the right part of the formula the teacher will declare to build. The participants cannot say to each other the correct order of the formula when the game is started.
There will be 3 rounds, you can divide the class in groups from 5 to 10. Start with something simple, before the round begins. Give 2 the group minutes time to see the formula and learn it (or you can explain the formula before the game). Between the rounds give them 5 minutes to organize them, to find strategies and so on.
At the end of the third match make a follow up on the life skill used, the various approaches to resolve the game, the formulas and how they can improve the ability to focus and memorize the knowledge needed to “win the game”. Try to understand which processes are used to focus and memorize, ask if during the game there was a lot of confusion, or some distraction, if they have tried to repeat the formula or if they need to focus on the meaning of the formula. Then try to make another match to try to differ approaches to memorizing the formula.
You can simplify the task with just writing the formulas on a board but nameless (if it is too hard, or it is the first time they see the formula, you can write the name too, in that case you can just ask at the end of the matches if they understand better the formula with this kind of activity or not).
If you think the exercise, even so, is too hard, try first to use sheets with numbers from 1 to 20 and the task to ask them to touch them in order to make practice easier.