What is this provocation about?
Photos from @sherrattsam March 31st 2015
Provocations don’t have to come at the start of a unit.
We are mid-way through our unit on:
Challenges, risks and opportunities are causes and effects of human migration.
Concepts: Connection, Causation, Perspective
Being an international school, many of our students have experienced migration. The challenges, risks and opportunities which they have faced are closely connected and center around learning a new language, making new friends and parents having new jobs.
As a team we wanted to go deeper into exploring the challenges, risks and opportunities of migration, looking at multiple perspectives and tackling issues such as rights to a VISA, refugees and detention centres etc…
As a team we wondered, how could we provoke our students? How could we allow them to experience some of these frustrations?
Our solution was to collaborate with our G8 drama students to create this:
A role-play of ‘The Arrival’ by Shaun Tan.
Where our uns
uspecting G2 students were immigrants, disembarking from the boat.
To create confusion,
the G8 students were communicating in a made up language, visa and immigration forms were in Wingdings font, and none of the immigrants knew exactly what to do as they were ushered through health checks and required to fill out various forms.
The students were given passports with various occupations and ask to complete forms in an unknown language and prove their job status.
Medical forms were completed as students tried to get their Visas in order, the language barrier proving to be a real source of confusion, as one boy desperately tried to make meaning and ‘learn the language’ through a translator.
Here are some comments from the G2 students:
I’m sad that I went to all these stations but still didn’t get the stamp.
I feel angry because I can’t understand what they’re saying to me and I don’t know where to go or what to do.
She wants me to come here again and be tested, but I’ve already done this!
We’re lining up but I don’t know why.
I’m trying to see where I’m supposed to go, but I don’t understand what their language is. I got this form from over here, but I don’t know if I filled it out right. She told me to sit down quick and then sent me away. There are too many people here.
thepowerofinquiry 