What a better way to strengthen inferencing skills and understanding propaganda and its persuasive power on people than to do a game of Pictionary Telephone. Students alternated from drawing a picture of what a phrase represented to writing a phrase of what a picture represented. All together, students wrote a phrase, passed entire stack, put phrase on bottom and on new paper drew what the phrase, passed entire stack and so on until the stack made it back to the original owner. Special thanks goes to our community members, Mrs. Keely Miller and Mrs. Rachel King, for bringing this activity to us to help teach what propaganda does in a simple, understandable form. After students understood the activity, one of the adults started pushing a certain 'propaganda' (image or text) in each turn. Soon, all of our stacks started representing similar ideas and images. Students saw how easy it was to be manipulated and how they weren't looking for tricks or to change the rules because the adults were in a position of authority and were trusted to be the guardians of the rules and doing it 'right'. This activity made it concrete how easily it is to be manipulated and really set parameters on who is the custodian of knowledge, morals and rules, and how it is so important to not blindly follow but ask questions. This activity was done in our Holocaust unit and allowed students to understand on a small scale the manipulation, blind following and propaganda that allowed such terrible acts to take place. Most importantly, it was a fun way to learn the objectives. (We even had grammar reinforced with proper sentence structure when it was time to write.)
1 Comment
Debra Newton
2/20/2020 09:23:06 pm
Wow wow wow! What a great way to teach that!
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