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Weekly Tribes 2015 – 2016: Spoons!

You may remember this game from your youth…it involves grabbing for a spoon on the table and if you don’t get a spoon, you get a letter in the spelling of ‘spoon’. If you end up spelling ‘spoon’, you don’t win.

Put students into groups of 4 – 6.
Put plastic spoons on the table: one less spoon than number of people in the group.
Explain that when you ask the question, the first person to take the spoon takes it because he/she knows the answer!. It is not a race to get the first spoon, but once the first spoon is taken, it IS a race to grab a spoon.
The unfortunate person who does not get a spoon (because there are not enough spoons to go around) gets a letter – first it is an “S”, next time it would be a “P”…and so on until the whole word is spelled.

Ask a question…for inclusion, for influence, for content.

Here are some examples:
How many people in your group like pizza? (inclusion)
Who in your group has been to another country? (inclusion)
Who in your group would help someone, even if it were not a friend? (influence)
Who in your group is always respectful, even when the teacher isn’t looking!? (influence)
How many people in your group can name a word that is both a noun and a verb? (content)
Who in your group can give an example of a two-step equation? (content)
Who in your group knows the difference between ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’?

Don’t play the game too long! (No one should ever get to the full spelling of ‘S-P-O-O-N’)

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