Reflections on John Hunter and The World Peace Game
Wow, another inspiring TED Talk. The video made me excited, nervous and skeptical all at the same time. It is an extremely valuable teaching tool as it incorporates inter-disciplinary skills such as ethics, philosophy, math, science etc. And it encourages children to use their creative and critical thinking skills. I was a little skeptical wondering if young children can emotionally handle some of the larger issues like killing and death. Gifted children sometimes have trouble in this area as they can be excessively sensitive to right and wrong. They are also able to mentally understand issues that they cannot deal with emotionally. But I remain intrigued and curious; thinking the positive benefits such as developing their understanding of large world issues outweighs my skepticism.
After listening, I immediately looked on line where I could buy such a game. After reading more information I found out that it isn’t available yet and it took Hunter 35 years to learn how to properly facilitate playing of the game. This of course dampened my enthusiasm to implement it into my pull out enrichment class.
I was ready to turn off the computer in disappointment when I read the encouraging words that teachers and students could develop games of their own using key world issues. So now I am mulling over the possibility of doing this in my enrichment class next year during my second module beginning December.
This would involve a lot of research on my part and I would have to develop an understanding on how to facilitate such a project. But what creative fun it could be!
I continued reading the article and came upon this quote by Hunter: failure is normal and routine. Wow, this is certainly freeing. I find this quote to be encouraging knowing that imagination and creativity need the freedom to fail in order to learn and discover.
I am currently teaching grade 2-7 gifted children in 3 different pullout classes. I am free to develop the curriculum as I see fit. Sowith my students here we go ...........................
After listening, I immediately looked on line where I could buy such a game. After reading more information I found out that it isn’t available yet and it took Hunter 35 years to learn how to properly facilitate playing of the game. This of course dampened my enthusiasm to implement it into my pull out enrichment class.
I was ready to turn off the computer in disappointment when I read the encouraging words that teachers and students could develop games of their own using key world issues. So now I am mulling over the possibility of doing this in my enrichment class next year during my second module beginning December.
This would involve a lot of research on my part and I would have to develop an understanding on how to facilitate such a project. But what creative fun it could be!
I continued reading the article and came upon this quote by Hunter: failure is normal and routine. Wow, this is certainly freeing. I find this quote to be encouraging knowing that imagination and creativity need the freedom to fail in order to learn and discover.
I am currently teaching grade 2-7 gifted children in 3 different pullout classes. I am free to develop the curriculum as I see fit. Sowith my students here we go ...........................