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Why? This game’s great for the first
day: it allows students to move around a little, in shy, shuffly,
non-embarrassing ways, checking each other out, checking you out. It allows
them to see that you, as the instructor, care about giving them opportunities
to do that. It allows them to see that you’re not so worried about
looking like a geek. It allows them to see who else is in the room, and
to find out certain little bits of information about them.
Here’s how the game goes: Tell them that it’s time
to shuffle around a little.
- Have students move the desks until there’s a big clear spot
in the middle of the room.
- In my experience, they move the desks to the wall, and then huddle
there among them. So invite them out into the scary Middle of the Room.
- Tell them this is a way of seeing who’s here. So you’d
like them to group themselves according to certain important characteristics.
You’ll ask a question, they should figure out their answers, and
go stand with people who have the same answers they do. (Okay, these
instructions are vague—but on purpose. They allow the group to
have that moment of a-ha as they figure out what to do. Stay tuned.)
- First question: You’re ordering a single-topping pizza. What
do you get?
- There’ll be some awkward silence.
- Then someone will shout “Sausage.” Others will also shout
“Sausage,” and the Sausage people will all find one another.
So will the Mushroom people. And the Cheese people, and the Onion people...
- Encourage the groups to bunch together so you can see clearly where
one group starts and another one ends.
- Now, find out who’s there. Walk around with confident hand gestures,
saying “So in this group we have...what?” Cheese, they will
answer, in stringy, whispery ways. (You’ll work on that.) Sausage,
the Sausage People will say. You get the idea.
- Now, ask the next question: group yourself according to your favorite
vegetable. They will mill around again, regroup, you will survey...and
you’ll ask the next question.
The progression of questions: Start simple. And funny. Good questions
I use: Group yourselves according to...
...your favorite childhood cartoon.
...the number of siblings you have.
...what kind of hometown you come from—one-word description.
...your favorite animal.
...your favorite thing to do with five bucks you find on the sidewalk.
Then sequence to more specific questions. Group yourselves according to...
...How you describe yourself as a writer—one-word description.
...How you describe yourself as a speaker—one-word description.
...How you describe yourself as a reader—one-word description.
...How excited you are that you get to give speeches—one-word description.
...How excited you are that you get to write papers—one-word description.
...your biggest strength as a writer.
...thing you’re still struggling with as a writer.
...your biggest strength as a speaker.
...thing you’re still struggling with as a speaker.
If there’s time, there are great difficult questions. Group yourselves
according to...
...your passion.
...the biggest strength you bring to this class.
...the thing you’re most confused about in your whole life.
(inevitably, the biggest group for this one will be asking “How
Does the Cambus Schedule Work?” It’s always nice when some
other students can answer these questions.)
Time: allow about 12-15 minutes, though the beauty of this one
is you can make it longer or shorter.
Not a Knot
Why? This game is actually tied to Rhetoric: it gives you a chance
to see how your students make decisions, how they try to persuade other
people, how group dynamics work. And never underestimate the impact of
walking in with a rope in the first week of class.
Here’s how the game goes: while the students are doing a
little writing (I have them filling out notecards, usually, with their
contact information and stuff—see the notes for Day 2), you subtly
place a wad of rope on the ground.
- Place it so it’s in a big snarl. Place it so it’s loopy
and confusing and tangled-looking. Try to do this quietly, so people
don’t watch you too closely. You could do it in the back of the
room, I suppose.
- Once the students are ready, have them move the desks and come look
at the rope.
- Without talking, or without touching the rope, they need to determine
whether, if each end were grabbed and pulled back gently, there would
be a knot in the rope or not. (They can get close and look...they just
can’t touch anything.)
- Still without talking: If
they think there’s a knot, they should stand on one side of the
rope wad.
- If they think there’s not a knot, they should stand on the other
side. Everybody has to pick one side. There’s no spot for “I
don’t know.”
- Once everybody’s on one side or the other, tell them they can
change sides at any point.
- Now: their job is to convince
people on the other side to cross over and join them.
- Your job: listen hard, noting the strategies of persuasion:
- Some appeal to specific facts: look, this stretch here looks like
a messy knot, but really, it’s just some rope wrapped around
some other rope...
- Some appeal to outside knowledge: you know that no matter how
carefully you put away things like extension cords and hoses, they
always bunch themselves into a knot.
- Some appeal to emotional reasons: look, the cool people are all
over here, and you look like a dweeb standing there all by yourself.
- Remind them again: they can change sides at any point. Once everybody’s
sure about where they are, you and a volunteer slowly pull on the ends
of the rope. See what develops.
- Again, they can still change sides. See who does: sometimes at the
last minute, all the people who guessed wrong will jump over to the
other side. That’s interesting.
- Sometimes all the people who guessed wrong will stand stock still,
being Absolutely Wrong Together. That’s interesting too.
Processing: Two main fronts on which to process: what that exercise shows
about various angles of persuasion, and (unbelievably enough) why Rhetoric
at Iowa progresses the way it does.
Questions to ask for Front 1: Angles of Persuasion
What did you look at (or think about) when you were making your initial
decision? (The rope? The majority? Other experiences with tangled things
you’ve had?)
Was anybody really not sure? How did those people choose a side?
What strategies do you remember people using during the persuasion part?
What strategies were most persuasive?
Why did you stick with the group you stuck with? (Especially if the incorrect
group stuck on the “incorrect” side...what makes people continue
to stick with an idea in the face of enormous counterevidence?)
Things to say about Front 2: Rhetoric at Iowa
When you think about the process the class went through, you’ll
notice eerie similarities to how Iowa sequences your Rhetoric education.
Step 1: you analyze things. In this exercise, you were looking at the
rope. You were looking at other people’s decisions. Any time you
look closely at the evidence that’s there, you’re analyzing.
Step 2: You were figuring out how other people’s decisions might
affect yours, whether they have more or different expertise than you do,
why they might be making their choices. Or you were figuring out how to
roll in other info you have, such as “Things in a wad are almost
always knotted up.” Figuring out how to juggle those different perspectives
is similar to the act of mapping a controversy.
Step 3: I asked you to persuade the other side to come join you—so
you were advocating for your own side, trying different approaches to
get more people.
That’s how Rhetoric is here: we work first on analysis, looking
closely at the rope—only instead of rope there are texts, pictures,
films, speeches...
Then we look at mapping, thinking about how various points of view on
issues are formed, who holds what knowledge, who values what.
Then we advocate...after we’re confident that our analysis is skillful
and we’ve thought about the people involved in our issue, what motivates
their stance, and how we might effectively reach them.
Time: this can fill 35 – 45 minutes, depending on how comfy
you are with the processing. Which is really where it’s at, for
this game.
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