I began the lesson by handing back to the students the Capitulum Primum : Pensum A sheets that had been completed and collected last lesson (see lesson 26). I had pre-organised the students into groups of four, by drawing a symbol on their returned sheets; ⌽, ⎅, ⌲, ⌾ or ⍦. The students found the other three or four students with the same symbol and created groups from them. (Each group was designed to contain at least one person who had made zero errors in Pensum A).
2. The students were now given 10 minutes to correct as many errors as possible from their group’s sheets. The students were encouraged to not mindlessly change answers but to try and understand why the correct answer was correct. I explained that students who had made no (or few) errors seemingly understood what was required of Pensum A, and I encouraged them to teach the other students, and the other students to learn from them. I walked around the room listening, and answering questions where required.
3. Students were now asked to come to the front of the room for a rules explanation of Tumultus, a card game that we would be playing the next lesson. They were told that rather than coming to the classroom, that they should go to the library, where I had booked tables so that the games would not encroach upon each other. The rules of Tumultus are relatively complicated - especially for those who have not played a similar type of game before - and I thought it was worth taking a chunk of class time to explain them. Tumultus and its rules can be downloaded here, and printed out. Each game also requires a die and four counters (although these can easily be created by the players).
