This section in my book is 13 pages. But I will try to give you a brief overview with some illustrations. Many times teachers get a closed model game like Ghetto and expect that magically students will learn form their experiences.
Nor likely. You may have heard the old expression… “some people just don’t learn. They keep doing the same thing over and over and expect to get different results.” All the game does is generate experiences that you would normally not have in your classroom.
Any time you are facilitating a group process of any type, the fist thing you must do is allow students to ventilate about their experiences. But then they need a structure to help them analyze their experiences.
E. Experience the SG “Play”
I. Identify “look” be descriptive
- What did you think was the most significant thing that happen in this game.
- What were the factors that explain your low score (or high score).
- What made you feel good or bad during the game.
A. Analyze “think” be analytical
- What problems did you face and how did you attempt to meet them
- What did you try to do that worked good for you….why
- What did you try that did not work for you…why
G. Generalize “learn” draw conclusions
- What did you lean from this game experience
- What did you learn from this game that you did not know
- Did you learn anything that will help you in life
Conclusions: now it is important to validate these conclusions.
Sequential steps for validating conclusions:
- List conclusions: identify conclusions drawn from the game experience.
- Game Data: Identify the specific happenings in the game that brought you to this particular conclusion.
- Judgment: Is the conclusion drawn from the game experience true or untrue in the real world.
- Life Data: Identify specific happenings from real life that support your contention that the conclusion is realistic or unrealistic. This last step can often lead to a search for data that supports or disproves the conclusion.
Caution: When you start on blackboard list factual things that happen in the game, students will often jump to the second board analysis. For example : “no one cared if I lived or died”. This is not a fact, this is analysis that you made from some facts. What did you see or hear (facts) that caused you to make this analysis. Very important that they distinguish facts (something that actually happen in the game) and there interpretation of these facts that led them to make their analysis