Wow! My kid’s teacher just asked me to give a book talk for her class. Apparently some of the kids have been mistreating books lately, and she wants a librarian to come in and impress the importance of books upon them. I guess all the real librarians were busy! Ha!
Anyway, Companion and I talked a little and he gave me some ideas for activities. I think I am going to start with a game where each kid gets a piece of paper with a skilled job and a job description on it. The scenario is that they all live spread out in an area, and the plague sweeps through and some of them die, taking their knowledge with them. Lo, the recipe for cement and the secrets of midwifery are lost. In this way I am going to try to show the importance of collected information in an easily-accessible format.
I am just brainstorming at this point, but I think this could be fun. I have been offering my skills to that school for years. I’m really glad the new teacher finally sees me as a tappable resource.
I LOVE IT!! Can I come and play the plague?
You should have them all work together to make a book (story, illustrations, makeshift binding, etc.). When it’s done and they’re all proud, you then start ripping pages and coloring all over it, thus destroying all their hard work. That ought to stop those little ingrates from mistreating books in the future. Just kidding. Sort of.
Anonymous, that is the lulz.
Supa: the part of the plague will be played by my black eyeliner.
yeah yeah the plague thingy is good… but really wouldnt bouncy castle be more entertaining??
I think “tappable resource” should be one of your job options. But plague seems a bit obscure for little kids, and heavy for big kids – how about mauraders, with a nice Alexandria-like destruction of received knowledge? Bring a few berzerker helmets and assign some kids to rampage, grabbing a few job descriptions here and there and trashing them…. now how ya gonna make yer soap, mr smartmouth tallowmunchkin?
Sounds like fun! I wish we did that kinda stuff in school. You always have such good ideas anyhow, I’m sure it’ll work out!
Sounds fun! Those kids seem like they need a fierce librarian to come in and show them what it’s all about.
Aw, SJ is all teaching kids and stuff! pnif
Anon’s idea is genius.
Also, it’s hard for me to hear you say “tappable resource” and not think of your butt.
That is so cool! You’ll have to tell us how it goes.
I KNOW! You just want top scream TAP THAT ASS.
I can’t tell if you guys are encouraging me or making fun, but damned if I care.
I’m with dan on the berserkers idea. But then, my daughter got to be a cat that “died” in a play she did in Spanish class in first grade, and it took her two years to raise her hand to volunteer to be in a play after that.
Still, I think it’s a cool idea for a lesson.
A few years ago, I went to a conference for pandemic flu where they did just this sort of thing.
Before the conference, they lined us up depending on what job we did. We drew random pieces of paper-mine said I was out of work b/c family members were very ill and the number 2 on it, which meant that I was part of the 2nd wave.
The first wave hit and wiped out EMS and the ER from two different hospitals. And then the second wave hit and so on and so forth. It made it very real.
I hope you have as much luck with your class lesson.
I love that exercise! Tell us how it went.
Not making fun, dude! You go.
Oh this is so great! Fun.
Another thing you could do if you wanted is to break the kids up into pairs and give them each a prop (like a crayon, or a washcloth, or whatever) and have them come up with a rule about taking care of books incorporating that prop (never scribble on your books! Keep them out of the bathtub! Don’t leave them out for your little brother to rip up!) and then have some kind of chantable refrain for everyone to join in on reinforcing it…well, it worked for me once.
wait, i’m SO stealing that for my freshman comp class. I’ll ahve them brainstorm all the things they know how to do that might be useful after some kind of world disaster and collapse of civilization. and then write a clear essay on how to do that thing. then do the plague game and say SEE HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO WRITE CLEARLY!
Oh, and there’s a great game for this called Black Death, with tiny counters and a map of Europe. You choose stats for your plague based on virulence and mortality.
And dan I could totally picture your scenario happening and all the class ending up crying…!
unsteadiness pores Amtrak equate Holocene?leathern.graphically
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