There are some places that we think we know really well: the places that we use every day. Our homes and schools and places of work, our local streets and all the places that we visit on a daily basis and think of as ours. Then there are the places inside these places: our own bedrooms, our classrooms, our offices… But how well do we really know them?
How well do you think that you know your own school? All its obscure corners, its different rooms, its design and decoration, its furnishings, and everything else which makes it one particular unique place and not a school belonging to somebody else?
All these activities are about challenging our understanding of familiar places – and challenging the very notion of familiarity. Strangeness is always lurking right there in our line of vision! All the activities relate to schools: to school buildings, to classrooms, to playgrounds, to the detailed infrastructure of schools; but they could all be adapted to look at houses and homes instead if this is preferred.
ACTIVITIES
--All these activities are designed to be adapted flexibly across Key Stages 2 and 3, but some of them could also be used with Key Stage 1 children.
--All these activities are games. They involve individual players, teams of players, or the whole class playing together (divided into competing teams).
--Most of these activities could also be turned into classroom displays afterwards – or this could be the intention from the outset, and the ‘game’ aspect could be incorporated into the display. For example, Activity 2 could be about creating a display called What’s This? where people looking at the display have to try to guess the answers.
1. Unfamiliar views Maths, Geography
--Can you tell what places are from their appearance in plans and maps, from their shapes and from their locations? In this game the winning individuals or teams are those who can correctly identify the largest number of rooms from the total set prepared by the class.
--Individuals or teams prepare plans of one particular room in the school. Its distinctive features must be carefully observed. The shape of the room, the arrangement of the fittings and furniture, the location and size of doors and windows – all these things must be recorded, and taken together they should give enough clues without giving it away!
--The plans should be as accurate as possible. Accurate measurements should be taken, and scales calculated (with younger children this aspect can be simplified to the careful observation of shapes, proportions, and relative sizes).
2. What’s this? Cross-curricular
--In this game the players (individuals or teams) have to prepare sketches or take photographs of interesting or peculiar details of objects and places from around the school and its grounds. The more puzzling and strange the resulting image the better.
--Another approach is to look for unusual views rather than strange details. What do you see if you look straight upwards when you’re coming through the classroom door?
--There could also be extra recognition given for managing to find strange details or strange viewpoints of very obvious things which everyone would assume they are very familiar with. It’s easy to take an unidentifiable photo of some detail of something which nobody ever looks at!
--Which team can identify the largest number of these weird and wonderful things?
3. ‘It has nowhere to sit…’ English
--How much can you say without giving the answer away? There are many things that we can say to describe places – we can describe some of the things they contain, we can describe their moods, we can describe their locations, and so on. In this game players (individuals or teams) need to write descriptions of a particular place in the school, making it as detailed and specific as they can without giving the answer away. The winners are the players who are best at unravelling these elusive descriptions!
--Specific is a key word in this game. The first rule is that you must be saying things that couldn’t be said about other places in exactly the same way. It’s no use saying that it’s got a green carpet if ten other rooms have green carpets as well! This rule can be applied at two levels of strictness. Either it can be applied more generally, allowing certain things that would be the same elsewhere – ‘it has four windows’ – provided the whole description builds a unique picture. Or you can decide that nothing which could be said about another place is admissible. This poses a nice challenge. Instead of ‘four windows’ players would need to say things like ‘there are four windows and each is a different size’ or ‘there are four windows and only half this number of doors’ (making ‘four windows’ only a part of the statement).
--The purpose of the game is obviously to encourage accurate observation and description of places. But this is also an imaginative exercise, as the number of things that can be said about a particular place are limitless. Once it includes all the things that have happened there, or that someone can imagine happening there, then the possibilities are without end. ‘Everyone goes there twice a day…’ Or the things that place is not. ‘It has nowhere to sit…’ And so it goes on…
4. Turning it into numbers Maths
--How much can you say about a particular place in numbers? There are endless possibilities: the numbers of a particular kind of object the room contains (itself an enormous category); the room’s shape and proportions; the room’s measurements; the number of other rooms adjacent to this one particular room; and so on. And then there will be other categories that only give useful/specific answers with certain rooms: the number of functions it has; the number of lines of symmetry (how many does a circular room have?); the number of days a year that it’s used; and so on…
--This game could involve the preparation of sets of cards with individual numbers and the things they represent on opposite sides. Each ‘pack’ then records a room’s vital statistics, and two packs would be played against each other with players winning cards when they correctly identify the meaning of particular numbers. Alternatively the winning player is the first to guess the room.
5. The story of this place History
--How much history does one place contain? How many different uses can be found for the same places, the same rooms?
--Players (individuals or teams) choose particular rooms, or other places inside the school, and find out as much as they can about the story of that particular space. Perhaps it’s always been used for the same things! But can you prove it?
--This activity in particular could be done without turning it into a game. As a research activity, as the reconstruction of a story, it has plenty of interest and value without the game dimension.
How well do you think that you know your own school? All its obscure corners, its different rooms, its design and decoration, its furnishings, and everything else which makes it one particular unique place and not a school belonging to somebody else?
The distorted reflection of a building in London's Notting Hill. By Sylvain Bourdos via Flickr CC BY-NC.
ACTIVITIES
--All these activities are designed to be adapted flexibly across Key Stages 2 and 3, but some of them could also be used with Key Stage 1 children.
--All these activities are games. They involve individual players, teams of players, or the whole class playing together (divided into competing teams).
--Most of these activities could also be turned into classroom displays afterwards – or this could be the intention from the outset, and the ‘game’ aspect could be incorporated into the display. For example, Activity 2 could be about creating a display called What’s This? where people looking at the display have to try to guess the answers.
1. Unfamiliar views Maths, Geography
--Can you tell what places are from their appearance in plans and maps, from their shapes and from their locations? In this game the winning individuals or teams are those who can correctly identify the largest number of rooms from the total set prepared by the class.
--Individuals or teams prepare plans of one particular room in the school. Its distinctive features must be carefully observed. The shape of the room, the arrangement of the fittings and furniture, the location and size of doors and windows – all these things must be recorded, and taken together they should give enough clues without giving it away!
--The plans should be as accurate as possible. Accurate measurements should be taken, and scales calculated (with younger children this aspect can be simplified to the careful observation of shapes, proportions, and relative sizes).
2. What’s this? Cross-curricular
--In this game the players (individuals or teams) have to prepare sketches or take photographs of interesting or peculiar details of objects and places from around the school and its grounds. The more puzzling and strange the resulting image the better.
--Another approach is to look for unusual views rather than strange details. What do you see if you look straight upwards when you’re coming through the classroom door?
--There could also be extra recognition given for managing to find strange details or strange viewpoints of very obvious things which everyone would assume they are very familiar with. It’s easy to take an unidentifiable photo of some detail of something which nobody ever looks at!
--Which team can identify the largest number of these weird and wonderful things?
More strange reflections and distortions... By Sylvain Bourdos via Flickr CC BY-NC.
--How much can you say without giving the answer away? There are many things that we can say to describe places – we can describe some of the things they contain, we can describe their moods, we can describe their locations, and so on. In this game players (individuals or teams) need to write descriptions of a particular place in the school, making it as detailed and specific as they can without giving the answer away. The winners are the players who are best at unravelling these elusive descriptions!
--Specific is a key word in this game. The first rule is that you must be saying things that couldn’t be said about other places in exactly the same way. It’s no use saying that it’s got a green carpet if ten other rooms have green carpets as well! This rule can be applied at two levels of strictness. Either it can be applied more generally, allowing certain things that would be the same elsewhere – ‘it has four windows’ – provided the whole description builds a unique picture. Or you can decide that nothing which could be said about another place is admissible. This poses a nice challenge. Instead of ‘four windows’ players would need to say things like ‘there are four windows and each is a different size’ or ‘there are four windows and only half this number of doors’ (making ‘four windows’ only a part of the statement).
--The purpose of the game is obviously to encourage accurate observation and description of places. But this is also an imaginative exercise, as the number of things that can be said about a particular place are limitless. Once it includes all the things that have happened there, or that someone can imagine happening there, then the possibilities are without end. ‘Everyone goes there twice a day…’ Or the things that place is not. ‘It has nowhere to sit…’ And so it goes on…
4. Turning it into numbers Maths
--How much can you say about a particular place in numbers? There are endless possibilities: the numbers of a particular kind of object the room contains (itself an enormous category); the room’s shape and proportions; the room’s measurements; the number of other rooms adjacent to this one particular room; and so on. And then there will be other categories that only give useful/specific answers with certain rooms: the number of functions it has; the number of lines of symmetry (how many does a circular room have?); the number of days a year that it’s used; and so on…
--This game could involve the preparation of sets of cards with individual numbers and the things they represent on opposite sides. Each ‘pack’ then records a room’s vital statistics, and two packs would be played against each other with players winning cards when they correctly identify the meaning of particular numbers. Alternatively the winning player is the first to guess the room.
5. The story of this place History
--How much history does one place contain? How many different uses can be found for the same places, the same rooms?
--Players (individuals or teams) choose particular rooms, or other places inside the school, and find out as much as they can about the story of that particular space. Perhaps it’s always been used for the same things! But can you prove it?
--This activity in particular could be done without turning it into a game. As a research activity, as the reconstruction of a story, it has plenty of interest and value without the game dimension.
