Possibly the most entertaining part of today was teaching social studies to my older classes. Each class does the same lesson. The first class was older, but only started English recently. The second was younger, but quite experienced with English.
We were going over rules, laws and voting. The text said that sometimes people vote on what rules should become law. So I put it to the test. In each class I called on whoever had been the most disruptive and said "Should _____ sing for us? Hands up for yes. Hands up for no." I tallied the results on the board. The kids in both classes were kind and no one sang.
Next I picked two or three under performing students and asked the class if I should give them a star. This is the currency of the school, after 50 stars a student receives a gift from the director. "Should we give _____ and _____ a star??" In both classes they voted yes. Then I gave them a star. Only in my second class did one student say "But that's not fair." "Yes, but why did you vote for it." They all kind of laughed because now it was too late.
The last one was the best. "We should make a class rule that we vote on important things. Hands up for yes. Now hands up for no". Here's where the difference showed up.
The first class, which was more competitive, and less cohesive voted overwhelmingly against this. So I remain the dictator of the classroom. The second class was unanimously in favour of voting! Now I have a democracy too! But, I still set the agenda. We voted whether we would play hangman at the end of class; 7-1 in favour of hangman. I'm curious to see where this goes.
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