sc.01 But why? - Mystery exercise and assessment [D]

Content

• Statement of inquiry
  • Increasing global interactions concentrate more power in cities which can cause unsustainable growth, and increase disparities.
• Factual questions [Remembering facts and topics]
  • What is a migrant?
  • Where is Venezuela / Brazil / Roraima / Rio de Janeiro?
• Conceptual questions [Analysing big ideas]
  • How does migration cause disparities between places?
• Debatable questions [Evaluating perspectives and developing theories]
  • Why do people like to blame poverty for the high crime rates in Brazil's cities?
• Aims of this lesson
  • To participate in a geographical 'mystery' exercise to facilitate discussions upon migration, urbanisation, urban poverty, crime and violence.

Base knowledge and understanding

Context

Lesson #1 - Mystery

The task for this first lesson is to complete a mystery exercise with the associated steps of understanding, categorisation, linking and critical thinking.

1. Get the students into groups of 4.
2. Issue each group with a set (4 sheets) of polygons (on A3 paper) and ask them to cut them out - they should have 40 hexagons in total. [10 minutes]
3. Working within their groups - the students should take it turn to read the hexagons aloud - ensuring they understand all the vocabulary. [15 minutes]
4. The next challenge is to sort the hexagons into a number of different categories. The number of categories is up to the group members but more than 8 categories should be the target. It would be advisable for the students to take a photo of the hexagons in their categories. [20 minutes]
5. The students should now work in groups to link the hexagons together - so that each hexagon side touching another hexagon has an explainable link. The outcome should not look like a 'patchwork quilt' but should probably look more like 'an octopus hit by a car windscreen'. [30 minutes +]
6. The linked hexagons should help explain 'why' at every stage of the explanation.
7. Each group should try and list (but not necessarily answer) 20 'why' questions based upon their hexagons. The questions could be as large as 'why did Cezar die?' to 'why was Cezar in Rio de Janeiro?'.

Resources

These polygons were produced using this website and then edited in Microsoft Word.

Earth in Chrome Project - Future cities - But why?

This mystery task is based on the work of David Leat in Thinking Through Geography.

Lesson #2 - Assessment

Assessment criteria

Assessment task