Thanksgiving Collaboration Challenge
Try it out and share your experience with us!
Dear collaborative discussion friends,
This week we are inviting you to participate in a Thanksgiving Collaboration Challenge. We have curated a list of activities with modifications for Thanksgiving. Try out one or more of the activities listed below and share your experience with us! Whether you have a story about how well the activity worked or a funny story about how it didn’t, we would love to hear from you. You can share your story and a photo, by replying to this newsletter email or sending them to esw@interactivityfoundation.org with the subject “Thanksgiving Collaboration Challenge”. We will feature the most interesting stories in a future newsletter!
If you missed the previous newsletter, Developing Collaborative Perspective, you can access it and our other weekly newsletters by subscribing below.
This week's activities:
Activity 2.6 – Building on the Ideas of Others
Activity 2.7 – Expanding Thinking with Metaphors
Activity 1.4 – Understanding Your Identity in Collaboration
Activity 2.2 – Embracing Contradictions
Activity 5.5 – Identifying Knowledge in the Community
Activity 1.2 – Developing Collaborative Perspective
Activities for the Thanksgiving Dinner Table
Option One: Building on the Ideas of Others
Usually everyone goes around the dinner table and shares one thing they are grateful for. For this collaboration challenge, invite each person to use the phrase “yes, and…” from Activity 2.6 Building on the Ideas of Others to acknowledge the idea shared by the person before them and then build on it when sharing what they are grateful for. For example, the conversation might go like this:
Person 1: I am grateful for my family.
Person 2: Yes, I hear you on the value of family and I’m also grateful for my friends.
Person 3: Yes, I’m also grateful for people in my life and I’d like to share my appreciation for the furry companions, like my cat.
After everyone has shared what they are thankful for, discuss how it felt to use “yes, and…” when sharing and how it affected how well they listened to others.
Option Two: Expanding Thinking with Metaphors
Another option for the dinner table is to try out this modified version of Activity 2.7 Expanding Thinking with Metaphors. Invite each person to share a metaphor (or a simile) for Thanksgiving, for example:
Thanksgiving is a classic movie
Thanksgiving is a redwood tree
Thanksgiving dinner is a candle in the middle of the night
As your guests share their metaphors, try to pause between each one and see if others can guess what the metaphor means.
Option Three: Understanding The Meaning of Thanksgiving in Collaboration
You could also try a modification of Activity 1.4 Understanding Your Identity in Collaboration. Invite each dinner guest to reply to following prompt:
Imagine that you have the opportunity to live on another planet with an alien population. They obviously don’t know anything about Thanksgiving. What item would you take with you to represent what Thanksgiving means to you and why? It can be an item that is on this table or in this room or anything else that symbolizes the meaning of Thanksgiving.
After everyone has shared an item, discuss any similarities, differences or anything that stood out as the most interesting to the group.
Option Four: Embracing Contradictions
If you are hosting Thanksgiving dinner with guests who may not know each other well or may not really appreciate one another, try out a shortened version of Activity 2.2 Embracing Contradictions. Introduce the idea that contradictions can help us see others in a more nuanced and generous way. Invite each person to think of a contradiction that exists within themselves. You can model it:
I am [insert a personal characteristic or trait], however, sometimes I can be [insert a contradictory characteristic or trait].
After everyone has shared an internal contradiction, discuss the following questions:
How is it possible for us to contain these contradictions?
What does this tell us about ourselves?
Activities for Kids
Option One: Make Your Own Knowledge Turkey
This modified version of Activity 5.5 Identifying Knowledge in the Community can be a fun crafting activity for kids. Print out and share copies of this Make Your Own Knowledge Turkey template and provide them with scissors, tape, and markers. Explain that they are going to be making a turkey that shows different things they have learned from different people or places and guide them through the following steps:
Cut out the turkey’s head & body and the red, yellow and orange feathers.
Write on the brown turkey body what you learned from your parents and your family.
Write on the red feathers what you learned from your friends.
Write on the yellow feathers what you learned at school or other classes you take outside of school, like a dance or poetry class or a sport you play.
Write on the orange feathers what you learned from nature or your pets.
Stick the feathers to the back of the turkey’s body with tape and your knowledge turkey is done!
If they are having trouble thinking of what to write, you can give a few examples to help spark ideas, such as we learn:
Manners, like saying please, excuse me and thank you, from our parents
Baking from Grandma
Hide and Seek (or some other game) from our friends
Math at school
Patience from taking care of our dog
Once they are finished, display their knowledge turkeys on the wall or a table and invite the kids, or the whole family, to walk around and look at all the turkeys that were crafted. Discuss as a group anything that stood out as interesting or unexpected.
Option Two: Guess the Puzzle Image
Another fun activity for kids is Activity 1.2 Developing Collaborative Perspective. For this activity, you would need a puzzle with large pieces (preferably under 50 pieces). This puzzle could be of an image related to Thanksgiving to keep with the theme of the day or it could be any image. Use a puzzle with a recognizable image where any one piece only has a fraction of the total image.
Organize the kids into small groups (5-6 ppl) and give them each a piece of paper. Explain that each of them will be given a puzzle piece and that they are not to show the puzzle piece to anyone else in their group. Tell them that the first step of the game is to guess using just the piece they are given what picture the completed puzzle with all the pieces put together shows. Distribute the puzzle pieces. Invite them to look at their piece and silently write down their guess for what the full puzzle image may be.
Now, remind them that they are still not to show their puzzle piece to anyone in their group. Explain that now they will be guessing as a group what the full puzzle image might be. Ask each child to describe what their piece shows and encourage the other children in the group to ask questions till they have a good idea of what each of their puzzle pieces look like. Then, ask them to guess as a group what the full image might be.
Next, tell them that they can now show their puzzle pieces to everyone in their group. Ask them to lay out their puzzle pieces together on the table and guess again what the full puzzle image might be when looking at their puzzle pieces together.
Finally, reveal the full puzzle image shown on the box. Have the children discuss and answer the following questions as a group:
How different were the guesses you made by yourself based only on your piece and the guesses you made after hearing others in your group describe their pieces?
Could you understand what each person was describing or did you have to ask more questions?
When you finally saw others’ puzzle pieces, how did that change your guesses about the full image?
Now that you know what the full image looks like, what was missing from your group’s puzzle pieces that might have helped you identify the image?
What did you learn from this game about working alone on solving a problem compared to working with a group?
We hope you try out a Thanksgiving Collaboration Challenge and share your stories with us. Whether you have a story about how well the activity worked or a funny story about how it didn’t, we would love to hear from you. You can share your story and a photo, by replying to this newsletter email or sending them to esw@interactivityfoundation.org with the subject “Thanksgiving Collaboration Challenge”. We will feature the most interesting stories in a future newsletter!
Upcoming Events
The Interactivity Foundation is organizing the third round of sustained discussions on the topic of Learning & Society. This is an exciting opportunity to engage in discussion with educators about the future of learning in our society. Participants will be awarded a $500 honorarium. Read our previous newsletter to learn more about this discussion series. The deadline to apply is Thursday, November 30th at 5 pm EST. If you are an educator and interested in being part of this discussion series, apply here.
Congratulations to our Collaborative Discussion Coaches who are concluding a certificate program at the end of this fall semester! Please remember to email Shannon Wheatley Hartman at esw@interactivityfoundation.org to receive the link for the Retrospective Participant Survey and to have your participants complete this survey at the conclusion of your program. The results of these surveys will provide valuable feedback to help us better understand the impact of Collaborative Discussion Certificate Programs.
Looking forward to collaborating,
Ritu Thomas, Shannon Wheatley Hartman, and the Collaborative Discussion Team