Week 2 Day 1

Materials & Equipment:

Sticky Notes Place to put sticky notes

Aligning with the Big Picture Today:

Today students will have a brainstorming session to discover what is wrong with school. They will choose the most important issues and present them to the group. This is setting up tomorrow MI Theory. The students will need to understand MI theory to design academic games.

Objectives and Road Blocks:

The students need to learn how to hold a brainstorming session and tease out the best ideas. Students take it as a "rip on school" day and not as a constructive day.

Management Check:
Students ideas need to be equally valued. It's possible that one teammate can overtake the conversation.

Habits of Mind:
Thinking and communicating with clarity and precision Taking responsible risks

Students need to be respectful while other students are presenting and also ask probing questions while the students are presenting. Sticky notes end up all over the oor.

Time Frame (minutes)

Teacher Action
Explain to the students that last week we had a lot of fun playing games, interacting, and problem solving. Today we are going to brainstorm what is wrong with school. (Dangerous Idea) Break the students up into groups of 4 and have them brainstorm issues they have with school.

Student Action
Students will come up with as many ideas they can and place them on a wall or poster paper. At this point not idea is wrong.

20/50

Time Frame (minutes)

Teacher Action
Direct the student groups to harvest the brainstorm. They are to choose the top ve issues they have with school.

Student Action
Students discuss and debate what the biggest problems. They need to prepare a oneminute presentation on what the issues are. (No solutions yet) Two students present from the group. Students ask questions when the group is done presenting.

30/50 40/50 45/50

Direct the students to present their one minute presentation and encourage any clarifying questions they might have with the presentations

Direct the group to come up Students express the ideas with commonalities they they heard repeatedly heard between the groups. Are between the groups. any of the groups saying the same thing? Setup tomorrow. There is an N/A educator who noticed many of the same problems that you noticed just noticed and pointed out. School doesn't matter, school doesn't engage me, I want to socialize more. etc. He has a theory called multiple intelligences that we are going to explore tomorrow. You've stated the problem and tomorrow I will explain his solution.

50/50