Micro-teach session: Abundance games

This post describes how to teach a game called “Resource Line” (and is a summary of a micro teach session with Mirka by Andrew Zionts at the Barcelona meeting).

The lesson plan is as follows:

Aims:

  • To discover more about each other’s knowledge and skills.
  • To create more beneficial connections between participants.
  • To explore the abundance paradigm.
  • To build community.

Context
Useful for adults.

mirka_1Use
At the beginning of a course, or party or community event, takes one minute per person.

Content
It is an educational tool which expands our definition of wealth, to help build our understanding of economy and abundance in a social setting.

Process

  • Introduction
  • Instructions
  • Time
  • Set-up
  • Do the game
  • Feedback

Actual session:

Question to group: What is wealth?

Notice that nobody mentioned “money”, that the things which we consider wealth, that really matter are more complex than money.

Play the game “resource line”

  1. Each person should take a sticky note (or piece of paper) and write three topics or skills that they are willing to share, and can talk about for 1 minute.
  2. Wear the sticky note like a badge, and form two lines facing each other.
  3. One partner picks one topic from the other, and listens for one minute about it.
  4. Partners switch roles, and the other picks a topic and listens for a minute
  5. The one line shifts over one person, the end person cycles back around to the beginning.
  6. Repeat, and keep repeating until the lines are completely cycled through.

Questions to the group: Who learned something new? Who had trouble stopping after one minute? What permaculture principals apply to this exercise? How can we live permaculture through this game?

Closing question to the group: How can we learn to employ permaculture principals and live permaculturally in our day to day lives?

Feedback/sharing

This game can be connected with other games about abundance to create an evening of abundance games as an activity to conclude a day of economy in a PDC.

“Resource line” can connect well with a similar game , “the web of abundance” where the same badges are kept on, and everyone in the group stands in a circle. One person holds an end of a ball of string, and calls the name of someone else in the group and a topic which interests him or her and throws the ball to that person. That person holds the string tight, and throws the ball to someone else, calling out their name and the topic, and this continues until a “community web” is formed (or the string finishes). This is a great illustration of community networks, resilience, interconnectivity, etc, and is a great way to get to know more about everyone in a group.