::A Geek in Korea::

Evening classes let me experiment a great deal with activities and what I want to do with classes. These students in particular are open to me trying new activities because we have class together five times a week and doing book work is boring. I discovered a new activity that I’ll use whenever I do stuff with non-verbal communication from now on. It was a lot of fun and worked well.

I handed out a sheet with 20 drawn facial expressions that weren’t labeled. We then worked on discussing the possible emotions that might be expressed with faces. We went through all of them and some students had radically different opinions on how to interpret the different expressions. It was interesting to see the little scenarios that they used to try to explain why they might feel the way they do.

Next, I handed out individual white boards for each student in the class. The students had to draw their own three or four panel comic with facial expressions, then each other student in the group would interpret them. The panels were drawn without any thought bubbles or dialog at all, and we had to guess why they had their expressions on their face. The idea was that each person had a chance to interpret the pictures their own way and explain to the class why the person that drew the picture made it that way. After everyone guessed, the person would reveal the real story.

I made a joke picture on the classroom’s white board for a sample to explain while they drew their own. I copied the expressions directly from the paper I had handed out in the class, then added Rageguy at the end. The scenario was a guy goes to the bathroom with a stomachache. He is relieved to make it without incident. He looks and realizes there is no toilet paper. Rageguy. I did my best to draw the FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU face from memory, while keeping the original face for my comic so it wasn’t out of character. I was so proud of the result.

No one in the class knew the meme and I didn’t bring it up, but the second student that guessed my comic’s scenario got it exactly right. I only drew the body, facial expressions, and a dangling bar to suggest the toilet roll. I hadn’t labeled anything or made it too easy either. They all complimented my artwork too. I like slipping jokes into my lesson. I worked the entire Barenaked Ladies song “If I had a Million Dollars” into a lesson about the future tense stuff and no one realized it. I’m too subtle for my own good.

Some of the students made comics that told a story in sequence. Others did individual pictures with a scenario behind each one. One student asked to do another activity because he couldn’t draw at all. I let him draw street signs or signs warning people of some prohibited action instead because I thought it would be easier. It was a pretty fun class to do because people were coming up with creative stories, and other people were laughing about the different artwork. The white boards made it easier to move around the room without everyone having to get up and look at the board. I’ll do this again next semester, and possibly try to integrate it with larger classes in the future.