Profound thoughts, personal feelings, and what ever else strikes me as I traverse life's meandering path.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Important teaching tool

So I have learned the Japanese variation of a highly effective teaching aid. This aid is helpful in resolving conflicts. It is called "rock, paper, scissors," although it is quite the international game and has many names. Here is a bit of what I found on wikipedia (the whole article is rather lengthy):

Rock-paper-scissors is a hand game played by two or more people. The game is known by many names, including 'rock-scissors-paper', paper-rock-scissors, paper-scissors-rock,fargling, cachi-pún, scissors-paper-rock/stone, jan-ken-pon, "jenken" kauwi-bauwi-bo,камень-ножницы-бумага and rochambeau.

I'm sure most anyone is familiar with this game is some way, shape or language. Feel free to read up on the international tournaments they have for this game. And apparently this game originated in Japan. Here is the Japanese form:

First you say "Sai showa gu" while presenting your fist on every beat. However you don't make one of the signs until the next line of the chant, "Jan ken pon." You show your hand motion on "pon." In case of a tie you say "Aiko de sho" and do your gesture on the last word. The gestures are the same as in America; fist for rock, flat hand for paper and a sideways peace sign for scissors. Gotta love handy games! =)

2 comments:

  1. How fun! Thanks for sharing. Who knew that would be such an effective tool in the classroom.

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  2. Ha! Totally...it's like if you just made a decision, it would be unfair, but who could argue with rock paper scissors?! =) In Czech it's Kamen, Nuzky, Papir, Ted! (Ted means now, and it's when you make your move!)

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