This semester I had set aside the standard three days of preparation for Threshold of Democracy. Unfortunately, in New Hampshire we had some snow this winter, resulting in three snow days for my History 101 class. With three fewer classes, I had to cut the third day of prep.
So today I tried to squeeze together three aspects of prep:
Rules review:
The slides for the lecture are here. Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to add either images or animations. But the upside is that I can freely share these slides without having to worry about copyright.
Faction Planning:
For this exercise, I broke the students into their factions and asked them to choose one piece of legislation that their faction wants to pass and then answer the questions on this handout. The exercise asks the students to place on this spectrum all the characters in the game. The spectrum organizes the other characters based on their support or opposition to this piece of legislation. The second part of the exercise asks the students to imagine how they could shift their opponents. That is, whether or not they could change the wording of a particular law or exchange some sort of favors.
I think this exercise would have worked better with more time. Sandwiched between the lecture and the prewriting work, the students really only had fifteen minutes. Some of them did do good work, but much of it was researching the stances of the factions or the indeterminates. While the students do need to know that, my real goal for this exercise was for the students to do more advanced planning.
The other issue is that I wish that I had made it clearer on this exercise whether or not I want the students to list whole factions or individuals.
Furthermore, I should really create a separate exercise for the indeterminates, as forcing them to use this same tool didn’t really work as they are not collaborating to pass a particular bit of legislation.
Prewriting:
I asked all the students who have to give a speech at any point during the game to come to class with some form of prewriting for this speech. The idea being is that they could use some time with their faction to review what they’ve written so far as well as get feedback on their performances. Specifically, feedback from the other students using the categories that I will use when grading them. This exercise seemed to work well for the students who did the prewriting, the exception being the indeterminates.
So today I tried to squeeze together three aspects of prep:
- Review the remaining rules (I hadn’t covered the roles of president, herald and archon yet)
- Get the students into factions to plan their strategy; I designed an exercise based on the Spectrum of Allies tools that organizers use
- Have the students practice their speeches
Rules review:
The slides for the lecture are here. Unfortunately, I haven’t had time to add either images or animations. But the upside is that I can freely share these slides without having to worry about copyright.
Faction Planning:
For this exercise, I broke the students into their factions and asked them to choose one piece of legislation that their faction wants to pass and then answer the questions on this handout. The exercise asks the students to place on this spectrum all the characters in the game. The spectrum organizes the other characters based on their support or opposition to this piece of legislation. The second part of the exercise asks the students to imagine how they could shift their opponents. That is, whether or not they could change the wording of a particular law or exchange some sort of favors.
I think this exercise would have worked better with more time. Sandwiched between the lecture and the prewriting work, the students really only had fifteen minutes. Some of them did do good work, but much of it was researching the stances of the factions or the indeterminates. While the students do need to know that, my real goal for this exercise was for the students to do more advanced planning.
The other issue is that I wish that I had made it clearer on this exercise whether or not I want the students to list whole factions or individuals.
Furthermore, I should really create a separate exercise for the indeterminates, as forcing them to use this same tool didn’t really work as they are not collaborating to pass a particular bit of legislation.
Prewriting:
I asked all the students who have to give a speech at any point during the game to come to class with some form of prewriting for this speech. The idea being is that they could use some time with their faction to review what they’ve written so far as well as get feedback on their performances. Specifically, feedback from the other students using the categories that I will use when grading them. This exercise seemed to work well for the students who did the prewriting, the exception being the indeterminates.