That’s not fair! How often do we hear that phrase? Don’t answer...it’s a rhetorical question!
Imagine being 10 or 11 years old. The concept of fairness is as complex as trying to figure out why kids don’t follow directions the first time they are given. Developmentally, these cherubs do not have the ability to differentiate what is fair and what is not fair. If something doesn’t go the way they envision, it is automatically considered unfair. So how do we go about trying to help our kiddos begin to grasp the concept and understand that...ya know? Sometimes, life just isn’t fair?
We opened the month playing a game that was purposely not fair. We used spinners to play a math game and it was rigged so that certain spins had a considerably higher probability of being landed on. The kids didn’t catch on super quickly, until one said….”I’ve won 30 times and my partner has only won 13! This game rules!” Then the other pairs started tracking wins and realized that the spinner had unequal parts and that wasn’t fair. I immediately asked, “What is fair? What does that mean?”
They came up with a classroom definition: Fairness is when all participants have an equal amount of chances at being successful. Then we watched Alex’s video and how she related it to sports and life. I called upon our PE teacher to help me out in this. That way they didn’t just see it as something we are doing in class...and try to apply it outside our humble abode. Coach Henderson was teaching a unit with them playing flag football and demonstrated the rules for them. They talked about non-examples of the rules and she videotaped them acting out these examples. They were better able to understand what was okay by having seen what isn’t acceptable.
By the end of this month, I could see and hear these rockstars challenging ideas with thoughtful justifications. Whether it was in the way I was calling upon them to answer a question, the rules of a math game, making up games themselves, or even life in general! We watch CNN Student News each morning and they are now able to look at the news stories about Syria and other countries at war and ask questions about what we can do to give those children an equal chance at life!
Pretty powerful unit! If I do say so myself!
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