Fun in the Classroom - Zombie Apocalypse

So Megan has once again (I think) hit the nail on the head with her link-up party and is collecting ideas for having some FUN in the classroom. Especially in high school classrooms we seem to get awfully serious and grown-up and (horrors!) test-driven. No wonder teachers and students always seem to be stressed, miserable, reluctant, bored or a combination of the above. Whether it is something small like a sweet rewarded 5 minute quiz at the start of class (bribery for the win!) or something more educationally sound (we hope), I am a firm believer in FUN for the classroom (also parentheses for the sentences...and exclamation marks, clearly!).

My latest and greatest FUN idea is entitled:

The Zombie Apocalypse

image from Shaun of the Dead - the only Zombie movie I've ever seen. I hated it.

It was born in last lesson on a very long, dull day when frankly the last thing I felt like doing was the next little poem or grammar exercise. Does anyone else find that some of the best ideas emerge when you're avoiding something?

I only played the game with with my English classes, because a) Maths is too curriculum crowded and b) it was harder to make it sound relevant in Maths. But I think at the beginning of next year I will play it with all my classes - I found the activity really thought provoking for me and my students. Not only that, but it really gave insight into certain class dynamics and opened doors for really fascinating class discussions in the lessons that followed.

So, without further ado, I offer you The Zombie Apocalypse Game.

I start building it up very seriously. I have a very important question to ask you... Something everyone should think about in their lives... Something potentially life changing, and very serious... 

"So, if there was a Zombie Apocalypse..."

[wait for laughter to die down]

"...and everyone in the world was infected except the people in this very classroom, and the school building was surrounded by Zombies, and we have one hour to prepare before they break through the fence and attack us..."

[forgive the criminally compounded sentence but that's how I talk sometimes]

"...where in the school building would we go, and what would we do?"

[pause for the murmur of conversation, questions and general surprise]

"...and by the way, there is only one right answer."

[mostly true, so far, though every time I've played I've added to that 'right' answer]

The answers to that question forms the first part of the lesson. Getting food, water and weapons; finding a safe-ish location - it takes a while to debate, discuss and generally argue about all the issues raised. After the first few minutes of confusion, everyone has an opinion. I'm very strict about not "cheating on the thought experiment" - but within the bounds of the question, anything goes.

The second part of the game is much more challenging - both to play and to manage. I start by pointing out this sad truth:

"Um, guys... we've just used up half of our survival time  arguing..."

This leads to a discussion about how best to make survival decisions most effectively. So far every time we have decided to elect captains in various fields: defence, food & water, health and long term survival. We talk about what would make a good captain for each of these categories - what personal characteristics will benefit the group.

Then I ask for nominations (with motivations) from the class. This part is tricky. I come down very hard on rude or inappropriate nominations, and I warn them beforehand to think carefully about what they are going to say before they open their mouths. But once the process is moving properly it can be incredibly affirming for the kids. It forces them to think about the qualities they REALLY admire in their classmates, instead of the silly things which often result in popularity at school.

Once captains have been nominated (I don't actually take it to a vote, but rather accept all sensible nominations) we discuss priorities and assign a different number of people to each work category based on urgency and heaviness of the tasks involved. 

All in all, this part of the game still looks like fun, but it is actually pretty serious work. Strengths and weaknesses, group work, prioritizing - it starts to look like a serious assignment! But we're all still (somehow) engaged, and having fun. Weird, huh?

The last part of the game gets very deep and begins to tread on very sensitive ground. In fact I don't play it with every class. But if I decide to take the plunge, it sounds like this:

"But what happens if some of us don't act in the best interests of the group?"

The kids have got my point by now, but they're still so absorbed in the game that they're willing to really think about it for a change.

We discuss whether we should elect an overall captain, and how we would choose that person. We talk about the important role of "enforcer", and some of the rules we would choose and choose to enforce. And of course HOW they would be enforced. Curriculum links to The Lord of the Flies and Animal Farm become obvious at this point, but the same discussions come up in any class. If I did this at the beginning of the year then links to classroom constitutions are practically mandatory.

Either way, the game has paid its weight in educational value.

And it's fun! It really is. In the weeks after I played this I have heard rumours of zombie apocalypses in the playground. Other classes have requested that we play. 

I smile. Me 1, Boredom 0.

[linking to Megan's Better Together Linky! Thanks Megan... Go check out the other entries!]

yours in survival mode,
jjr

Punting Down the Cam

[WARNING: this is a sentimental post about bygone days...*sniff*]

I believe I am actually a child of the 20s. Probably my favourite novel of all time is Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night, set in beautiful Oxford in the stately interwar days when women had just been admitted to universities and everyone still wore academic dress to College dinners... And, of course, when the best Sunday afternoon activity was to take a leisurely punt down the river. Sigh.






When I was fortunate enough to be sponsered on a "literary tour" of the UK a few years back, one of my most favourite outings was when we went punting. It certainly made a nice change from yet another stately home... Though Blenheim et al are stupendously magnificent, they are also terribly hard on the feet.








Not that punting is an art for the lazy. For those of you that don't know, punting is the art of pushing a boat down the river by means of a long pole prodded repeatedly into the muddy river bed and used as a lever.

Apart from negotiating bridges which are mainly too low to get the pole (or yourself) through upright, one also has to cope with steering (mainly with the assistance of the ardent paddlers) and going upstream. Going upstream is mostly a case of one punt forward - two floats back.


 

And of course: very HOT work (unless you fall in, which I fortunately didn't!) ... By the end of the outing I was much thinner, mainly due to removing layers of clothing!

Nonetheless - oh to return to those stately days...

Recent Reading and Rants

Big news guys: I've been cheating on my blog! With an old hobby - reading! At least two or three times in the past two weeks of silence I have stayed up late finishing a particularly delicious novel. Ah...

These are some of the things I've been reading. I may have missed a few in this list. As you can see, my bedside reading pile is getting a bit out of control

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins): dystopia fantasy. Thrilling, unexpected, sensitive. I will definitely be reading the sequels as soon as I can get my hands on them.

Sabriel (Garth Nix): classic fantasy. In a word - brilliant. Scary, but brilliant. If you're going to read one fantasy novel for teenagers, this is it.

Postcards from the Edge (Carrie Fisher): the story of an ex-druggie Hollywood actress, told in fragments. Funny, tragic, absurd and random. I reserved judgment until the last chapter, but the ending pulled the whole thing together beautifully.

News from Thrush Green (Miss Read): old, kitsch, adorable. Restful reading.

The Avenging Saint (Leslie Charteris): old, predictable thriller/teccie. Also restful if you like that kind of thing, which I do. Involves car chases, fights on yachts, rescuing millionaires' daughters from certain death etc..

The Physics of the Impossible, Introducing Stephen Hawking, Newton's Notebooks: I know these last three seem a bit highbrow for my taste, but don't worry. I've only been dipping into them because they're living on my husband's bedside table. So no review of these ones I'm afraid. You'll have to wait till I get a new brain.

You will also observe that there is very little official "literature" on my list. This is because (let's face it) most literature is difficult and/or unpleasant to read. So I don't, unless I have to. [disclaimer: there are many exceptions to this rule. wonderful ones. but they still aren't exactly leisure reading. and who the heck decides what is literature and what isn't anyway.]


Rant Over.


I hope to contribute a little more to the stream of internet *stuff* this week, thus in my own small way contributing to the creation of a species entirely dependent on machines (this is my way of saying "I'll try to post more")


Goodnight to you all.

This guy called Will

A few years back I came across this guy called Will. A pretty average guy really, from a pretty average small town family. His dad sold gloves and hats, if I remember correctly. Plenty of money, but not all that much education. Not posh people anyway.

Well in any case, by the time I met Will he'd had a fairly interesting life, with a fair number of divorces, affairs and general angst behind him. Rumours about his sexual orientation abounded, and most people had a strong opinion about him, whether it be positive or negative.

You see, the thing about Will was that he had a knack for writing (and selling) plays. He was prolific, and popular, and totally low brow. His plays were full of dirty jokes and lewd suggestions and blood and guts and drama...

A lot of them are still among the most popular and frequently produced plays in the English language!

Postmodern(ish) Literature and Cricket

I've just finished reading an extremely unusual novel by Graham Greene called Travels With My Aunt. Greene usually writes thrillers. This novel is very different.

Published in 1969, it's a surreal travel novel attempting to come to grips with the realities of a postmodern, post colonial era. The hero is Henry Pulling, a boring British retired bank manager who grows dahlias as a hobby. A less exciting Leopold Bloom I suppose. Less exciting at first, anyway...

Well I won't ruin the plot, but this novel goes off in almost as many unexpected directions as its almost aggressively normal hero.

Ultimately, Henry Pulling loses his confidence in the ideal of British Best and British Empire, despite mistrusting the supposed alternatives. Nonetheless, he clings  to what he sees as typically British conventions of honour and appropriate moral behaviour.

This irony is echoed by today's ICC World Cup Cricket match. India is playing England. Given these two nations' colonial history, the fact that they now meet to compete at "the gentleman's game" in (now independent) India seems to represent the ultimate conflict between Imperial ideals and traditional values.

Which is the true image of the long gone British empire? Probably both, or neither. Our only sources of information are multiple, kaleidoscopic images which leave us no less confused than when we started.

Daydreaming in Maths

I feel like a fraud.

Actually, I just feel like the same grade 9 girl who swore never EVER to study Maths for a single second longer than she absolutely had to.

Or maybe like the grade 12 girl who wrote sonnets, sestinas and villanelles in Maths lessons. In between absentmindedly creating calculus doodles.

Or like the university student who liked to sit next to the window during Maths lectures, watching the human traffic go by on Jammie plaza and mulling over one of John Donne's more obscure puns.

So this isn't a blog about Maths (despite the fact that I'm a Maths teacher, *gasp*). Nor is it a blog about English.

It's a blog about daydreaming.