I love when you stumble upon a hidden gem on the web. The Lottery of Life wandered into my world a few weeks ago and I thought it was awesome way to encourage kids to see the world from another person's shoes. Make sure you have your sound on!
The site takes a looong time to load. You'll know it's ready when a little arrow pops up on the upper right side of the wheel that says Spin the Wheel. Then it will load again. ...I've been lucky and had quick loads here and there, but I have also had to wait quite a bit.
Anyway, you'll spin and spin and then land in a setting. A baby will cry (that's you) and it will tell you where you were born. There will be a list of problems that exist in your country, as well as links where you can learn more about your country. By clicking on the problems, you can learn more about them and also see what is being done to solve those problems.
The students love this site because they talk about where they were born and then exchange stories about what life must be like there. It is amazing to see their level of engagement and excitement. They ask questions and eagerly further their research.
I used this site within our Human Rights unit. On our class blog, I asked the students to write one well-written reply to the question, which human right is most valuable to you? Then, after the spun the Lottery of Life wheel, they have to write a second reply to the same question but this time from the perspective of a child from the country that they landed on. The last step was for students to respond to one another. This piece was invaluable because it created a lot of, "really? that happens?" realizations and other rich dialogue. Something else I observed was that students who don't typically do homework were asking if they could finish the assignment at home, since the website took so long to load. I told them that they would have time in class the next day, but who am I to tell a student that he/she can't go home and learn??? By all means, I said.
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