Although dealing with matters of great seriousness, this article presents teachers with possibilities for some fun activities, albeit underpinned by serious and rigorous issues.
At KS2 students could take a similar approach to looking at explorers and how they communicated (or miscommunicated) with the people they came across on their travels. One scenario might lead to peaceful collaboration, another to conflict. Students could also take the roles of native peoples as well as explorers and see the meeting of cultures from different perspectives.
At KS2 or KS3, students might speculate as to how Roman, Greek or Arab philosophers, scientists and artists might try to explain to their counterparts in the Renaissance or later periods how their original works had influenced later generations.
At KS3 students looking at the background to Pearl Harbor could be divided into groups, and different groups could be given the different translations described in the article. They could then be asked to make intelligent speculations about what happened next. This could lead to an intriguing follow-up about the importance of words and the meanings we attach to words.
There are any number of scenarios to which this approach might be applied.
