Ejercicios de abstraccion (abstract thinking excercises)

It is difficult to describe this activity because it is so rich in content and so great a way to practice "horizontal" pedagogy. It is a mash-up of Jacotot's "What do you see? What do you think of it? What do you make of it?" and ???

Materials: color copies of Miguel Marfán's cartoon on the cover of Técnicas Participativas Para la Educación Popular, with the book title removed.

The flow:

Joker gives people a copy of the Marfán cartoon and ask them to look at it closely. Give them five minutes or so.

Second Thoughts.
Write a one sentence position you feel strongly about, a principle.
Then, write a "second thought" on the same subject. It should be a thought that you feel is valid to some extent.
Then, question that second thought, and so on until you have gone back and forth ten times.
At the end, repeat the initial sentence.
This activity should reveal the complexity of seemingly settled positions, making the writer think about her views.

Example:

• I don't cross picket lines.

Another surrealist game from Alastair Brotchie. This one involves the random creation of definitions.

What is...?

Each player writes a question on this pattern: "What is ----?" (e.g., "What is solidarity?")

The players each fold down their papers so the questions are concealed and pass their papers to the next player who writes a definition on this pattern: "It is ----" (e.g., "It is a scream in the night." or "It is the final resting place of our dreams.")

The first technique is from Alastair Brotchie's collection of surrealist games. The second is a variation on the first. Like all such games, it is important to play them freely, without concern about "making a good one" or being clever. If the players feel free, the results can sometimes be remarkable. We are used to trying to work together rationally, these games ask us to work together irrationally, creatively.

If/Would

In pairs or a group: each person writes the first clause of a sentence, beginning with "If", on this pattern:

This game is a variation on the "Yes, and yay" improvisation game I learned at Kani Club. The purpose is to be playful and free with language, using a standard form of interaction creatively. Like most games, it can be thematic or simply fanciful. (In any case, it needs to be fanciful.) Finding the creativity and play in each other is an important gain for people working together in groups. Just as we need to re-invent the wheel periodically when it comes to our strategy, we also need to re-discover each other from time to time.

The flow:

Adapted from "Broken Squares": Preparing Students for Group Work, from Practicing Collaborative Learning, Maryann Feola Castelucci and Peter Miller, College of Staten Island, CUNY, Dept of English, Speech and World Literature, Winter 1986