March Madness, Pharaohs and Happy Accidents

Sometimes, inspiration comes unexpectedly and results in some "happy accidents" in the classroom. Except that I know it's no accident. By deliberately using historical thinking (in this case significance) and inquiry scaffolds, by trusting students to engage with the process, and by being adaptable and open to the learning, March Madness lead my students to some pretty great connections between history, democracy and the nature of leadership in our world today.

I had been dissatisfied with my Egypt unit in my grade 11 World History (The World to 1500) course. I had tried to having the students come up with projects using open inquiry, and I was profoundly dissatisfied with their model pyramids and posters that looked like they had recycled them from grade 4. I wanted to do something more age-appropriate, more in-depth and that would use historical thinking concepts to teach them something they didn't already know about Egypt. We needed to go beyond mummies, pyramids and hieroglyphs to a deeper understanding! Trouble is, I didn't really know what that might look like.

Then, one day, I was scrolling through #TLAP (Teach Like a Pirate) on Twitter, one of my favourite hashtags and chats, (probably while I was in line at the grocery store), and there it was! 

The original tweet was about using March Madness brackets to decide who was the greatest psychologist. I'm so tuned out from sports, I had no idea it was an actual sports tournament - it was March, and I thought the teacher was just super-creative! 

In any case, after some embarrassing moments in front of my class where it was totally obvious that I know nothing about basketball, the students got on board with trying out The Greatest Pharaoh March Madness tournament.  You can see the eventual assignment at the link, but that first time, every day led us to a new "happy accident."

Step 1 - Criteria for Greatness

So the first step was to have the students develop the criteria for Greatness - how might someone earn the title "The Great?" Students brainstormed in small groups, then we compiled a big list - I don't have a photo, but it included things that I expected students to say, like: strong military, expansion of land and resources, but it also included things like: rights for citizens, access to water and transportation, and relative equality.

This was the first "happy accident." I was surprised by the level of caring in my classroom. A lot of the students who choose to take this class tended to be boys, often obsessed with battles and military tactics. This activity allowed for more voices to be heard. We recognized that the list wasn't exhaustive, nor would every pharaoh meet every criteria - that's where the persuasion would come in!

Step 2 - Choose a Pharaoh

There was some concern when we started that everyone would want to choose the same pharaohs and that there wouldn't be enough "good" or "great" pharaohs for everyone.  This concern was quickly put to rest by a quick look at the Wikipedia list of pharaohs of Egypt. With over 3000 years of Egyptian history, it became apparent that the problem was not one of scarcity, but of selection. We had to quickly figure out some criteria for choosing a pharaoh to research using Wikipedia as a starting point. Another "happy accident!"

Some of the things we came up with:

• Don't choose a pharaoh who doesn't have an article at all or one whose article is a stub
• Start with a longer article with lots of links and a picture or some artifacts 

I had students give me a list of their top 5 pharaohs, and I made them spend at least a half a period on making the list and doing their preliminary research.

Step 3 - Set up the brackets

It took a little figuring on my part, but I was able to give everyone a pharaoh they felt comfortable championing. In another "happy accident", it turned out that we had 4 starting groups (brackets?) - Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, New Kingdom and the Greek Pharaohs.

This was the line-up from the second year I did this assignment - the different colours show the competition between the first two pharaohs - each Kingdom sent forward half of the competitors

One of my favourite "happy accidents" of this activity was that everyone participated in the first round, but in a smallish group (about 6-8 students). This was fantastic for the English Language Learners in my class. They got to prepare and read a speech, they did the research and practiced both their written and oral communication in a smaller, friendlier venue. 

Students who were not a big fan of public speaking could be eliminated at this level, and the whole class didn't have to sit through days of awkward presentations. 

Each group voted on the students (and pharaohs) who had the best chance of winning in the next bracket. There were no extra "points" for getting further in the competition, I assessed everyone's research and speech using the same criteria and rubric. Students had to write the speech out (not just notes) so that I could assess everyone whether I heard their speech or not.

Step 5 - Practice and Get/Give Feedback

I built in time for structured peer review. Since we had created specific criteria for the presentation and specific criteria for "Greatness," students already had lots of structure and tools to assess each other. I added a few more structures to keep things moving along. I also specifically grouped students outside their competition brackets for the peer review. This had the "happy accident" effect of having students learn more about more of the pharaohs of Egypt. At this point, that seemed so incidental to the competition, the engagement, the research and communication that was happening so "naturally."

Step 6 - March Madness!

Once they got started, the competition took about 2-3 days. In one year, we had a three-way final competition and the other year, there were two finalists. I loved that the students surprised me and everyone with their research, passion, and dedication to honoring the criteria for greatness that we had started with together. In another "happy accident," I learned a LOT more about Soris/Sneferu and Hatshepsut, the two finalists in the two classes. Pretty interesting leaders, both of them!

Step 7 - Reflection

As I learned the hard way early in my inquiry journey, reflection is a critical part of the learning! I asked students to write a short reflection on whether they agreed with the "winners" and what they thought were the most important criteria for greatness, and why. 

Students surprised me again with in-depth reflections on how criteria like infrastructure, food production, and human rights (in historical context) were the most important to them and they felt that the winner had exemplified these more "modern" approaches. 

I had not imagined that students would be able to make such powerful connections to modern-day qualities of leadership and their own lives from a place that was so long-ago and far away. That, in fact, was the happiest accident of all.