Move It!

I have to admit I’m a Word Nerd. I love reading, writing, discussing literature, and all things linguistic. However, the best class I ever took was totally out of my comfort zone: action-packed, highly physical, and hugely impactful on my teaching philosophy and style. It was called The Kinesthetic Classroom.

The premise of the class was simple: We learn best when our whole body is engaged in the learning experience. Our brains don’t just rely on visual or auditory info, but all our senses. Plus, we care more about something when we do it rather than just hear about it or see someone do it. In other words:

In “The Kinesthetic Classroom,” we were on our feet all day, talking and moving, creating and interacting with each other. One of the biggest revelations was that it doesn’t take any more time to plan an exciting lesson instead of a boring one. Time and again we came up with a more interesting, engaging way to teach a concept (interactive, movement-based) compared with the usual way we would teach (lecturing and taking notes). And no matter what topic the lesson was about, we were always able to discover ways to adapt it to our content area and grade level.

One of the best lessons we did was a social studies activity that I modified for language arts, but which could just as easily work for math or music or any other subject. It was called “Conquistadors vs. The Natives.”

The game works like this: divide the class into two even groups. One group represents the Spanish explorers (Conquistadors), and the other group is the indigenous South American people (Natives). The two groups lined up on opposite sides of a basketball court when we did it, but you could easily do this in any open space (having the fence around the court was helpful, though, to keep the “weapons” from rolling too far away).

The two groups “fight” by playing tag — if you get tagged by the other side, you’re “dead” and out of the round. But there’s a twist: the Conquistadors have “shields” (we used little white boards) and “weapons” (we used stress balls). Natives MAY NOT pick up the weapons. This allows the Conquistadors to “tag” from long range while the Natives must make direct contact (not just tagging the shield).

This seemingly slight mismatch between the Conquistadors and the Natives actually makes the game unwinnable for the Natives. You can test this by having half the Conquistadors put down their shields and weapons and join the Native team for the second round. Even with 2-1 odds, the Conquistadors will win. You can keep shifting more players to the Native side, and the Conquistadors will almost certainly always win. You can add more variables/rules to enhance the game with each new round. For example:

• It takes TWO tags to eliminate a Conquistador (to emphasize their superior armor)
• Conquistadors can come back into the game 20 seconds after being tagged (to simulate their advanced medical practices)
• The Natives can choose one person to be their Shaman — an invincible character who brings dead Natives back to life with their touch (acknowledging Native religious beliefs)
• The Natives can pick up weapons and throw them back (demonstrating the ability of the Natives to learn and adapt to the new technology)

The students will eventually realize the Natives don’t have a chance, no matter how athletic and quick they are. I always have at least one kid complain, “This isn’t FAIR!” That’s exactly the point. Encounters between Natives and Conquistadors were incredibly unfair, and this lesson helps kids internalize that reality in a way no lecture or video or worksheet could hope to do.

Now I don’t teach social studies, so I can’t necessarily use this lesson as designed. However, I adapted it to demonstrate another unwinnable situation in one of the books we read for language arts, The Great Fire. In that true story, Chicago firefighters struggled in vain to put out the legendary O’Leary barn fire before it swept across the city.

Instead of Natives and Conquistadors, I had three groups: Firefighters, Buildings, and Fires. The Buildings (5-10 kids) spread out around the play area. The remaining students were split evenly into “Fires” and “Firefighters.” Fires lines up on one side, and the Firefighters line up on the other. The Firefighters have “protective gear” (white boards) and “water hoses” (stress balls). Like the Conquistador game, only Firefighters can use the stress balls.

At the start of each round, the Fires enter the city first, tagging Buildings to set them on fire (the Building kids wave their arms in the air comically). After a few seconds, the Firefighters charge in, tagging or using their “water hoses” to extinguish the fires and the buildings. The round ends when all the Firefighters are tagged by Fires or all the Fires and Buildings are extinguished.

Much like the Conquistador simulation, the Firefighters have a huge advantage and tend to win the first several rounds, even if Fires greatly outnumbers Firefighters.

HOWEVER, The Chicago Fire didn’t work the same way as conquering Natives. After a few rounds of Firefighter victories, I change the parameters: first, I take some of the white boards and stress balls from the Firefighters (not all the equipment was functional or available during The Great Fire). Then I move the Buildings closer together so they can tag each other and spread the flames faster (Chicago had tightly packed wooden buildings at the time). I run a few rounds, delaying the Firefighters and even requiring some of them to go to the wrong end of the city first (to simulate the confusion during the early hours of the Great Fire). I do shift more and more kids from the Fires to the Firefighters, but it becomes increasingly difficult for the Firefighters to keep the city from burning down.

Then I add The Wind.

One of the Fires gets to be The Wind — an unstoppable force that spreads fire from one building to another and interferes with the Firefighters reaching the burning buildings. This kid usually just runs in circles around Chicago, constantly igniting Buildings. If the Firefighters had any hope of winning in the previous rounds, this twist ruins it for them. You can even run the simulation multiple times, with 90% of the kids as Firefighters (Chicago DID get firefighting help from other cities, after all) and the rest as Buildings, Fire, and Wind — still, the Firefighters will lose every time.

Again, the kids will eventually declare “THIS IS NO FAIR!” And again, that’s the point! The odds were so stacked against the firefighters, they couldn’t put out The Great Fire. This simulation models that in a memorable, engaging way. And the best part is, the students feel the lesson without you having to tell them what the message is.

So, how could you use this imbalance of power to demonstrate a key concept in your subject area? Exponential growth in math? Hypertonic states in science? Comment below to share your twists on this engaging, kinesthetic simulation!