Trying to break up the monotony of Heart of Darkness discussion, I borrowed dice from the stats teacher. I took the 12 interrelated categories* we're looking at and assigned numbers to them. Today we read sections of the novel, and then I rolled the dice under the projector. Then they had to connect the two ideas and find passages that demonstrated this.
It's better than just answering study guide questions; it forces them to make connections. And I can just as easily roll one die as two, and roll multiple times to make it more challenging. When they've gotten good at it, I will give each small group their own dice to play.
And then? I will never teach Heart of Darkness in the spring again. It's ridiculous.
If you have ideas about how to flesh this exercise out into an actual game, I'd love to hear them. I'm also thinking about a map project, but not for this year. I'm burnt to a little crispy thing this year.
*The categories, you say? This year, the base of the pyramid is stacked with the thematic concepts of evil, fidelity, restraint, and civilization. The literary elements are pattern, symbol, image, and allusion. The three places are Brussels, England, and Africa, and the two people are Kurtz and Marlow. How might these connect to make it to the pinnacle question: What is the heart of darkness?
3 comments:
Oooh. I have no ideas to further the use of the dice, yet, but I do like the idea of using dice. Now my thinking cap is on!
Relatedly, you could make a tic-tac-toe grid with two categories in each box and they'd have to come up with a connection to "claim" the square
You could also make that idea into some kind of bingo card with two categories per square, although I'm not sure how many squares you'd expect them to have time to do well. It'd probably be best as "you have to complete enough squares to get one of the following kinds of bingo to be done with the activity" rather than "the first one with a bingo wins" or else you'd get really terrible quality answers, of course.
Neither of those would use the dice directly, but it's a similar game-making process.
Love this. *yoink!*
Post a Comment