Category Archives: Discussion Plan

Discussion Plan: Part-Whole relationships (Good).

Discussion Plan: Part whole relations

  1. Can a person be a good person if they make mistakes?
  2. Can every feature of someone’s face be beautiful without their face being beautiful?
  3. Can every act someone does be good without the person being good?
  4. Can a thief be a good person?
  5. If you share something that is good with someone else, does that mean you are left with half as much ‘goodness’ (can you think of examples and counter examples?)
  6. Does a good person have to be good all the time?
  7. How do you decide whether something is good?
  8. Can a good toy be good even if it no longer works?
  9. If having one slice of cake is good, is having 4 slices going to be 4 times as good?
  10. Can a team be a good team when one of the players is not a good player?
  11. Can all the players in a team be good players, but the team be a bad team?

 

Discussion Plan: ‘Good’ and ‘Very good’

Discussion Plan:   ‘Good’ and ‘Very good’

  1. What is the difference between getting a ‘good’ mark and a ‘very good mark’
  2. What is the difference between having a ‘good’ day and having a ‘very good’ day
  3. Would you always choose something that is ‘very good’ over something that is ‘good’
  4. What makes something ‘very good’ – is it just more good (good x2) ?
  5. Can something be ‘very good’ to the point where it is bad?
  6. Is ‘perfect’ the extreme limit of ‘good’ (going from good to very good to perfect)?
  7. Is it possible that if something has the potential to be good, it also has the potential to be very good? Is it always the case? (give examples/ counterexamples)

 

Discussion Plan: Good Acts

Are these acts good in themselves? Or are they good  because  the outcome after doing them is good?

  1.   Getting a high mark in a test
  2.   Cleaning up your room
  3.   Cheering up a friend who is sad
  4.    Looking after your younger brother or sister
  5.    Looking after yourself
  6.    Sleeping soundly (getting a good night’s sleep?)
  7.    Helping someone when your asked, but not enjoying it
  8.    Keeping a promise
  9.    Solving a riddle
  10.    Smiling
  11.    Telling the truth
  12.    Not telling the truth in order to protect someone’s feelings
  13.   Refraining from  Teasing someone

Discussion Plan: Recognizing and Judging what is good.

Discussion Plan: Recognizing and Judging something as ‘good’

Which of these things are good? Which might be good? (and on what criteria?)

  •       A plane that is very safe in the air
  •      A pen that writes very nicely
  •      A gun that shoots very accurately
  •      A gun that doesn’t shoot accurately
  •      A warm blanket in winter
  •      A broken sewing machine
  •      A broken toy
  •      A warm blanket in summer
  •      A haircut
  •      An expensive painting
  •      A table that is old and scratched but is just the right height to sit at comfortably

Discussion Plan: on ‘Good’

Discussion Plan: ‘Good’

1) Can something be good, but not be perfect?

2) Can something be good but unpleasant?

3) If something is perfect, is it always good?

4) Is a perfect lie a good lie?

5) Is it good to tell a perfect lie?

6) Do you think you can decide if something is good by looking at it?

7) Can you decide whether people are good by looking at them?

8) Do you think the world is a good world?

Discussion Plan: Creating something entirely new – ps,hs

Discussion Plan: Creating something entirely new

  1. When an artist creates a work of art, are they creating something entirely new?
  2. When the very first computer was created, was its creation entirely new?
  3. Can words create something entirely new?  (if so, does it need to be an entirely new word?)
  4. When we create things, does it always have to be out of something that already existed?
  5. Can shaping existing elements in totally new ways create something entirely new? (What about dreams? Fantasies? a language?)
  6. How do you think it is possible for an inventor to come up with a radically new idea?
  7. Is there anything we can create out of nothing?
  8. What about a problem? Can we create a problem out of nothing?
  9. If something is totally transformed – a larvae into a butterfly – is the entirely new thing (the butterfly) something created or something made?

In light of the discussion above, if the heavens and earth were created as an entirely new thing  – what might this mean?

Discussion Plan: Making and Creating – ps,hs

* Discussion Plan: Making and Creating, ps,hs

A. Consider what it takes to ‘make’ something in each of these  cases

  1. Can you turn a piece of fabric into a dress using a dressmaking pattern? If so, what form of activity does ‘making a dress’ involve? (what do you do to the fabric so that it is now a dress?)
  2. Can you make (or produce) a cake from flour, sugar, water and eggs? If so, what is involved in ‘making’ the ingredients into a cake?
  3. Can you make a face out of a lump of clay? If so, what is involved in ‘making’ the face?
  4. Can you produce a new song out of exiting sound clips? If so, what is involved in ‘making’ the new song?
  5. Can you make a work of art out of rubbish? If so, what is involved in ‘making’ it?
  6. Can you make/produce a new object that no-one has thought of before?  If so, what would this involve?
  7. Can you make up a story that no-one has imagined before? If so, what does this involve?
  8. Can you make a solution to a problem before anyone has even imagined the problem?  If so, how?

 For teachers: Here are some of the options for what ‘making’ might involve in the above discussion plan – but don’t limit your students to these:

Joining pieces together, mixing things together, uncovering something hidden within, moulding, reorganizing, transforming, reconceiving, inventing, intuiting.

 

B. Could any of these acts be acts of creating rather than of making?  If so, what would be the difference between them? (ie, between making a dress and creating a dress, making a cake, creating a cake, etc)?

 

Discussion Plan: Determining Boundaries

Discussion Plan: Determining Boundaries

  1. Does your home have a physical boundary marking where it begins or ends? If so, what is it?
  2. In what ways does your skin mark the boundary to who ‘you’ are?
  3. Does a boundary have to be physical or can it be psychological?
  4. Are rules a kind of boundary? If so, what are they they the boundary between?
  5. Can ideas have boundaries?
  6. Is Kabbalat Shabbat a boundary? If so, what is it the boundary between?
  7. Can families have boundaries?
    • If so, can you name a few?
    • Do families have different kinds of boundaries?
    • If so, can you make a list of the different kinds?
  8. Which of these boundaries are for the sake of other people? Which are for the sake of the shared environment?
  9. What is the point of boundaries? What  functions do they play? (bring sense of order, limit)
  10. Would life be better without boundaries?
  11. When you enter a different country and show your passport, is this the same as crossing a boundary?
  12. Does the imagination have boundaries?
  13. Who is responsible for establishing boundaries?
  14. Who is responsible for making us responsible for keeping them?

Discussion Plan: The limits of our care for the environment

Discussion Plan: The limits of our care for the environment

  1. If you are on a nature walk and there is rubbish lying around from people who did the walk before you, do you find this disrespectful? If so, in what way?
  2. If you are on a nature walk and throw an apple core off the path deep into the forest, does this matter? Is it being disrespectful? If so, what is it disrespectful of? If not, why not?
  3. If you are on a nature walk and throw an empty can off the path deep into the forest, does this matter? Is it disrespectful? If so, what is it disrespectful of? If not, why not?
  4. Are there ways you are already actively involved in caring for the environment? If so, in what ways? Why are you involved in doing this?
  5. Is there a difference between using nature for our own purposes and exploiting nature?
  6. When someone says that we are responsible for maintaining a ‘clean’ environment, what reasons might they give for thinking this? What do you think about these reasons?
  7. When a cat covers up their waste, do you think they acting toward maintaining the health of their own environment? If so, in what way? If not, why not?
  8. Elephants, like humans, bury their dead. Could they be doing this for the same reasons we do?

Is it possible that other animals take care of the cleanliness of their immediate environment  instinctively,  while people have to do it consciously/intentionally? If so, why do you think there is this difference?