In order to foster collaborative learning and group participation myself and a fellow pre-service teacher developed a series of 3 collaborative activities to run in the ACCA gallery exhibition ‘Better Together’. The activities were developed based on student suggestions.

Activity 1: Total Recall

• Each student to situate themselves anywhere in the gallery
• Stand for 2-3 mins and come up with one word (anything)

Then gather students into a circle in the foyer:

• Speaking to the person on their left, a student is to share their word with the person next to
  them (aloud)
• The student that receives the word, then shares their word with the person next to them, and
  the word from the previous person
• The next person shares their word and the words that they heard before them
• This will take place until all students (and teachers) have partaken, recalling and sharing all 20 words
• In the end, write down on a piece of paper all the words in the order that you recall hearing
  from the last person in the circle.

Activity 2: Paperback Writers

• Pair up and share a space with one another
• Stand for five minutes and take in the space. You can talk to one another, but keep the
  conversation about the space
• After 5 minutes, tape a sheet to your partner’s back and write a sentence, a poem, a word
  about your experience
• Try to guess what your partner is going to write
• Swap partners and repeat the activity using the same sheets of paper – you could go back to
  the space or choose somewhere new. After another 5 minutes record your observations on
  each other’s backs.
• Do this 3 times which should be a total of 15 minutes.

Activity 3: Intro-perspective

• Students take a sheet of paper to a position anywhere in the gallery
• They spend 10mins in this position taking notes, writing observations or lists, drawing
  sketches or maps
• After 10mins they put their paper on the floor and navigate to another student’s sheet of
  paper
• They then repeat the process for 10mins on the other student’s sheet of paper. After 10mins they swap to a third sheet of paper and they take more notes and observations for another
  10mins. This should take us up to 2:30pm.
• As a part of this activity students may do blind drawing or take sheets of paper from
  ‘Standard Length of a Miracle’.

Lesson plan (view all the lesson plan here)

The action

Ideas generated from the activities