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Lesson Leads
1. Experimental Lead
Lead for the play Miracle Worker or a lesson dealing with handicaps.
Outlined below are a series of gestures and motions. Please teach your partner who is blind, deaf, and mute to do these movements in sequence as they appear on this page. The task is complete when your handicapped partner, on cue, can go through the entire sequence of movements.
Your partner has not been given any idea of what is about to take place. Here are the movements:
1. Nod head up and down 2. Clench right fist 3. Hold right hand on jaw 4. Puff cheeks out 5. Shake head back and forth 6. Clasp hands together and hold them on the back of the head 7. Stand up, turn around and sit down 8. Shake hands.
2. Imaginary Lead
I want you to imagine that you could visit a shepherd tending his flocks by night in the hills of Israel 25000 years ago. The simple project I have laid out to you is merely to explain to the shepherd that the earth revolves on its axis each day and that the stars remain in relatively fixed positions.
or
Imagine you are living 100 years in the future and genetic engineering has reached the incredible state that it is possible for man to redesign the human being. What type of creature would you create? Consider not only how many eyes, arms and legs you would give your new human, but also what mental qualities. Would you make the prototype human passive? Aggressive? Artistic? Describe your design.
3. Narrative Lead
From De Bono's New Think: Many years ago when a person who owed money could be thrown into jail, a merchant in London had the misfortune to owe a huge sum to a moneylender. The moneylender, who was old and ugly, fancied the merchant's beautiful teenage daughter. He proposed a bargain. He said he would cancel the merchant's debt if he could have the girl instead.
Both the merchant and his daughter were horrified at the proposal. So the cunning moneylender proposed that they let Providence decide the matter. He told them that he would put a black pebble and a white pebble into an empty money bag and then the girl would have to pick out one of the pebbles. If she chose the black pebble she would become his wife and her father's debt would be cancelled. If she chose the white pebble she would stay with her father and the debt would still be cancelled. But if she refused to pick out a pebble her father would be thrown into jail and she would starve.
Reluctantly the merchant agreed. They were standing on a pebble-strewn path in the merchant's garden as they talked and the moneylender stooped down to pick up the two pebbles. As he picked up the pebbles the girl, sharp-eyed with fright, noticed that he picked up two black pebbles and put them into the money bag. He then asked the girl to pick out the pebble that was to decide her fate and that of her father. The girl put her hand into the money-bag and drew out a pebble. Without looking at it she fumbled and let it fall to the path where it was immediately lost among the others.
"Oh how clumsy of me," she said, "but never mind - if you look into the bag you will be able to tell which pebble I took by the color of the one that is left" (pp. 11-12)
or
A college football coach was faced with the possibility that his star player might be declared academically ineligible, so he pleaded with the math professor not to flunk the kid.
"Tell you what coach," said the professor. "I'll ask him a question in your presence. If he gets it right, I'll pass him."
The athlete was called in and the Prof. asked, "What's two plus two." "Four," replied the player.
Frantically, the coach cried, "Give him another chance! Give him another chance!"
or
An English schoolmaster decided to spend her summer vacation in a small German town. After the village schoolmaster helped her find a room, she returned to London for her luggage.
Then, realizing that she had not noticed a bathroom, or as it is called in England--- a water closet, she wrote to the German schoolmaster and asked whether there was a "WC" in or near the house.
The schoolmaster wasn't familiar with the English expression, so he sought the advice of the parish priest. Together they decided that "WC" must mean Wayside Chapel. A few days later, she received this reply:
Dear Madam:
The "WC" is located nine miles from the house in the heart of a beautiful grove of trees. It will seat 300 people at one time and is open on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday of each week. It may interest you to know that my daughter met her husband there.
We are in the process of taking up donations to purchase plush seats. We feel this is a long-felt need, since the present ones have holes in them.
My wife is rather delicate; therefore, she hasn't been able to attend regularly. It has been six months since she last went. Naturally, it pains her very much, not being able to go more often.
I will close now with the desire to accommodate you in every way possible, and will be happy to save you a seat either down front or by the door, whichever you prefer.
4. Story Question Lead
Today we're going to discuss a writer who is frightened by almost everything --- bugs, for example. He dreams about biting into a hoagie and seeing swarms of insects crawl out of the bun and out of his lips. Elevators frighten him. He sometimes imagines being stuck between floors, hanging by a frayed cable. This individual fears the dark - so much that even to this day he sleeps with a light on. Yet this man is one of fiction's greatest horror writers. Before I reveal the writer's identity, let me share a couple of passages with you from his work.
or
Halton Arp is a genius with a telescope. A tall, handsome, easygoing 53-year-old astronomer and former Olympic fencer, "Chip" Arp became obsessed with the mysterious celestial objects called quasars soon after they were first found in the early 1960s. Over the past two decades, his telescopic observations of quasars have presented astronomers with the first serious challenge to a law that has been basic to their science for more than a half a century.
5. Statistical Lead
U.S. shores are also being inundated by waves of plastic debris. On the sands of the Texas Gulf Coast one day last September, volunteers collected 307 tons of litter, two-thirds of which was plastic, including 31,3733 bags, 30,295 bottles and 15,631 six-pack yokes. Plastic trash is being found far out to sea. On a four-day trip from Maryland to Florida that ranged 100 miles offshore, John Hardy, an Oregon State University marine biologist, spotted "styrofoam and other plastic on the surface most of the whole cruise" (Toufexis, p. 46)
or
Every day 240,000 more humans are born than die. At this rate, the population will double every 40 years. In 40 years the current world population of 5 billion will become 10 billion; in 80 years, 20 billion; in 120 years, 40 billion - far more than the earth can possibly support.
6. Personalized
How do you think this community would react if the government said it was going to prevent 142 homeowners in our town from using their air conditioners on the first day or summer? Furthermore, they would deny another 142 families from using their air conditioners on the second day of summer and another 142 each day afterward.
Why then do we seem unconcerned at the destruction of our forests? Each tree we cut down has the cooling capacity of 1,000,000 BTUs, the equivalent of 142 air conditioners operating at 7000 BTUs. If we cut just one tree down each day, we are eliminating 142 of our planet's natural air conditioning units.
7. Question
Although most experts agree that we will soon have people populating cities in space, one important detail hasn't been discussed: will they like living out there? What will happen to the emotions and psyches of people who set up house in a space city? Will they hate it? Go crazy? And what about their loyalty to Earth? Will the turn against their home planet? or
Would you like a more efficient brain? A cure for old age? Parentless babies? Body size and skin color on demand?
8. Surprise
One classic example of surprise that has been repeated in classrooms for years may have begun in the early 1960s in an Ohio high school journalism class taught by Carl Swope. In the middle of Mr. Swope's class, a stranger burst through the door, drew a gun and fired it directly at Swope's chest. Swope crumpled to the floor, groaning in agony. The class froze in panic, and the stranger escaped down the hall, laughing. After a brief moment, Mr. Swope arose to calm the class, explaining that the gun was a blank starter pistol.
"Today," he announced, "we are going to talk about eye-witness accounts. Take out a pencil and paper and describe the crime and the criminal you just witnessed."
9. Direct
O.K. class, pull out your books and turn to page 74. Today we are going to look at … Lead Techniques 1. Every day 240,000 more humans are born than die. At this rate, the population will double every 40 years. In 40 years the current world population of 5 billion will become 10 billion; in 80 years, 20 billion; in 120 years, 40 billion - far more than the earth can possibly support.
2. The midsummer sun was high in a clear yellow-brown sky. The morning’s filmy blue clouds had dissipated, and the temperature was 8 degrees Fahrenheit--- way up from last night’s low of minus 100 degrees. A breeze wafted from the west at about eight miles an hour. A perfect afternoon for a drive on Mars.
3. In this chapter we examine the Max Lange Attack, the Classical Variation of the Two Knights’ Defense and a line in the Scotch Gambit that can arise if Black avoids the other two systems.
4. Imagine dropping ten alarm clocks off the top of the Sears tower. Then, imagine if you had to rely on picture-taking sensors, like bubble chambers, to tell where the pieces fell. You would have tons of pictures of little trails of bubbles that represented part of the paths of the tiny fragments of the clocks. After collecting the data, you would have to do the impossible. Using only these pictures, you would have to figure out how one alarm clock works and what materials made it up. Even with the most powerful computers, it would take you a long time, working constantly, repeating the experiment, and guessing about what the trails represent, to come up with an educated guess.
Brian Anderson, a pioneer detective of a world that would fit inside the tiniest speck of dust, works with such a problem.
5. Several years ago, artist Robert Lenkiewicz of Plymouth, England, discovered a quaint man named Edward McKenzie living in a metal tub stuck in some tree branches. Lenkiewicz dubbed the tramp Diogenes, after the Greek philosopher, and the two became fast friends.
But recently, when Diogenes died of cancer at age seventy-two, a local undertaker called the Plymouth Health Department with some startling news: Lenkiewicz was looking for a mortician to embalm the old man so his body could be displayed in the artist's library. In Lenkiewicz words, Diogenes would essentially become "something like a large paperweight."
Health officials quickly moved to locate the old man's remains. "But," reports Plymouth environmental health official Robert Fox, "we were too late. The body had been released from a hospital and embalmed by another mortician, and now we don't know where the corpse is hidden. Lenkiewicz refuses to say where it is except that it is outside of Plymouth, where we have no jurisdiction."
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