Let Students Say Anything to Prove Their Understanding

 WHEN CAN YOU SAY ANYTHING?    

     After Thanksgiving dinner, I convinced eight of my female relatives to sit down to a game of SAY ANYTHING by NORTH STAR GAMES.  The ages ranged from 16-95.  The game took minutes to teach, and when the ladies were finished with the first game, they all wanted to play again.  SAY ANYTHING is a party game that offers quick access to fun and laughter, but I also think that it has the potential to offer great insight into a student’s understanding. 

     I will use it in my rhetoric course and my English course.

WHY?

     Here is how you play:

• A player reads a question off of a card.
• Other players write down the answer that they think the READER will choose as the best.
• The reader secretly picks a favorite.
• The players all have two chips with which to indicate which answer they think the reader will choose.
• The reader reveals his choice.
• Scores are recorded.
• The next player becomes the reader.

HOW I WILL USE IT IN SCHOOL?

     In rhetoric, special emphasis will be put on the players lobbying for their own answers by using rhetorical techniques and concepts that the class has covered.

     In English, students will answer questions in the manner that they believe a prescribed character that they have studied would  answer.  Students will be expected to defend those answers based on their knowledge of the character they are portraying.

DISCUSSION WILL ENSUE…

when the reader (or teacher) does not think that a character would not respond in a way presented by a player.  This will provide great review fodder and an opportunity to talk about how authors reveal characters’ personalities.

Have Students Create GRAM-MARVELOUS Characters: A Quick Tip

    

     In roleplaying games, players get a chance to pretend to be someone else. The fictionally vicarious adventure is fun, but creating one’s character is also a great part of RPGs. Characters are often defined by terms such as attributes, traits, or characteristics.  Games often also require that characters have skills, weaknesses, all kinds of things that help round-out a good character.  This game prep is often done on character sheets.   Tons of character sheets can be viewed and printed for free from here.

• Dungeons and Dragons uses these attributes to help define a character: strength, constitution, dexterity, wisdom, charisma, and intelligence.
• All Flesh Must Be Eaten uses these attributes to help define a character: strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, perception, and willpower.
• Alpha Omega uses some of the descriptors above but also uses these terms for a character’s core qualities: agility, conditioning, vitality.
• Exalted uses these attributes to help define the characters in the game: strength, dexterity, stamina, charisma, manipulation, appearance, perception, intelligence, wits.
• Many newer games ask the players to compose their character descriptors from scratch, perhaps with a little help from the rules to insure the characters fit within the game’s setting and genre.

     I have found that my familiarity with roleplaying games has afforded one more way for students to do a character sketch. 

• Students read the story.
• Students compose a list of traits and skills that a character reveals, or
• Students use a prescribed list of attributes, traits, and/or skills and scores them numerically according to the character revelation provided through the story.
• Students defend their lists and/or trait scores.

     But, this is just one way to use these descriptor lists.  I like to pepper in a little grammar.  This is easily done if you have students compose a certain number of traits from scratch for a character.

• Students read the story.
• The teacher prescribes that the traits are written as CLAUSES.
• —————————————————————PHRASES.
• —————————————————————ADVERBS.
• —————————————————————ADJECTIVES.
• —————————————————————NOUNS.
• —————————————————————INTERJECTIONS…
• Students brainstorm and commit to five traits written as prescribed and that seem to describe the character well.
• Students defend their traits and their grammar.

     You can ask the students to present their traits in any grammatical fashion that you’d like.  It’s a nice way to review parts of speech, I’ve found.

     Now you have a quick assignment that allows assessment of reading comprehension–in this case, the ability to understand how a character is revealed by an author–and grammar.  It’s also a good springboard to talk about methods of character revelation.