Speaking/listening

Here's the problem. Evaluating a course at the end, and/or at various points during the course, is essential to good teaching/learning practice. But, the tools I have used have sometimes felt dull and plodding, like busy work, especially when I try to get people to make the evaluation more specific and concrete.

The problem is worse when the participants are friendly and compliant. Then it really feels pro-forma.

A circle game adapted from "Se Murio Chicho" in Tecnicas Participativas Para La Education Social Vol 1. (The sentence is from a scene in the John Sayles film "Passion Fish" http://youtu.be/hkcIBvJU8Uk)

Good for: fun, expression, loosening up, paying attention to details.

Setup: people sitting in a circle

Number of people: at least three

Materials: none

Time: 30 mins.

Flow:

The idea of this game is to help people develop their ability to make a range of expressions by magnifying and reducing motions and emotions made by others.

Good for: breaking down barriers to expression, observing degrees of expression, developing registers of speech and motion, learning culturally specific forms

Setup: empty space, standing in a circle

Number of people: three at least

Materials: none

Time: 30 mins or so

Flow:

Participants form a circle, standing, and count off.

This activity, based a children's song by Eric Herman and the Invisible Band, is a word game in which participants take one thing and describe it in terms of another (see also the surrealist game "L'un dans l'autre" (the one in the other) in A Book of Surrealist Games).

The idea of this circle game is to take an object and then re-imagine it as a series of different objects. I took this from a children's game I learned from Robyn Avalon when visiting with her family in Santa Fe. Kids love it.

Good for: loosening up, for using language naturally, in a fun and creative way that people at different levels can understand and enjoy.

Set up: chairs in a circle (could also do it standing)

Number of people: at least three

Materials: some simple object

Time: 30 minutes or so