For this class, I had the opportunity to use my performing arts skills! Students were given one of three images. Essentially, all three images had a green triangle on top of a blue square with a red circle next to it. All three pictures had some sort of variation so that they were different enough.
At some point, a student from each block pulled me aside to tell me something in private with the message that essentially said: I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I think you gave both of us the same picture….
Here’s where all 2 years of high school musical participation acting skills comes in. I definitely played up the fact that I probably made a mistake and forgot to give everyone different cards. Then some of the kids would say something like yea, we all have green triangles on top of blue squares and a red circle.
So I tell them that this is a learning opportunity for me to model that mistakes happen during learning. It’s fine. Practice makes progress. Let’s just play along and pretend I gave different cards. The students were more than happy to play pretend.
These aren’t exactly the images that we used for the activity, but I drew it out just so that we have an idea of what the type of images we used. They’re all very different pictures, but all three have the same elements.
Then we do the big reveal and BOOM! They all had different pictures…We all giggle a little bit knowing that my Oscar-worthy acting skills were all leading to a discussion. Students offer what they thought about our “practice round.” Some offer suggestions for what we could do better for the second round.
Overall, the second round went much better. Some students offered feedback that they didn’t do better the second time because of too much detail or generally confusing their partner. Block 3 lost some class time due to their class having less time due to schedule adjustments. Block 4-6 pretty much finished and we were able to get through the wrap-up.
Learning with Ms. Medrano 