Woah. Mind Blown. That just changed the entire game! It makes it so much more challenging. It's like putting Mafia together with 20 Questions. Adding in a lie makes the cognitive task of this game extremely difficult. You start to strategize and think about how you can ensure which questions are correct. You can't just assume that what ever said is true.
In some sense, this makes it more like real life. You want to assume that people tell you the truth. When you can't trust someone, it makes life decisions more difficult. It would even be easier if you know that the person always lied. But when it's impossible to tell what is true and what isn't, nothing is certain. I guess that's why it's so important in relationships.
But beyond that, this may be one of the first activities that I do in my classroom. It is extremely involved as it requires students to be strategic in choosing their questions, specifying their words, and critically thinking of ways to problem solve. Whether they accomplish the task or not, it shows the cognitive ability of these students. It may prove to themselves that they are able to accomplish the tough tasks of the chemistry or physics classroom.
It's been a long time since I played Mafia. If only the CCA/CPR time weren't so short in the morning and if only Mafia didn't involve 'killing', we could teach the Scarlet students to play Mafia.
ReplyDeleteCould you ever see yourself playing 20 questions (with lies) with your [future] students? While we were playing the game, I tried to group responses together to look for contradictions (Like when he said that the person was not alive, under 30, had lived in the 20th century, I was pretty sure one of those was a not true. Unless the person died at a young age recently, one of those had to be a lie). Do you think you could use the exercise to get students accustomed to examining data in a science class and looking for contradictions? (i.e. "If I make these three measurements and get these three results, one of them seems to contradict the other...")