Korean Job Discussion Forums

[blunder1983]

When I was teaching advanced level students in England we did a really successful exercise, where 3 groups were given different letters written to Sherlock Holmes.

They memorised the information as best they could (not word for word, just the gist) and then went into their main groups, (1 person from each of the three original groups) they then retold the story and solved the mystery. It worked really really well and I'm looking to replicate my success, unfortunately now I teach 2nd year middle schoolers and writing any level of information which is their level and still is interesting is proving most difficult. Anyone got any ideas on subject matter? Or how to keep it simple?

Thanks!

Chris

[Hanson]

There's one that I've used where you're told that 4 old men have started losing their memory. Each old man tells the same story, but for each piece of info given over the course of the story, one of the old men gets it wrong while the other three get it right.

Students in groups of four. Each student given a different old man's version of the story. Students get together after reading their part and try to figure out where each of the old men went wrong in their telling of the story.

Worked pretty well - students liked it. Only problem is, I didn't really have anything to follow it up with.

Another idea would be to write up 4 or 5 different eye-witness accounts of a robbery (or any crime for that matter) and again, have one mismatched from the others for different pieces of information about the suspect, or how many assailants, or the number of gunshots fired, and so on...