“At first it was hard – we struggled to have enough food. When we discovered agriculture and crops, it became easier. Food wasn’t so much of a problem anymore, so we could spend more time gathering other resources.” (Grade 7 student)

Students in Nathan Armstrong’s IAS classes at Tashkent International School discovered fire long ago. Since then, many of their groups have begun to explore the world around them. Having initially relied on wandering the wilderness to gather nuts and berries for survival. Groups have now developed settlements. Some have begun to craft crude spears and hunt, others are spending their time planting seeds and growing crops. Now, some groups are preparing for war. Others are harvesting their crops and preparing for the upcoming winter. Another group is busy expanding their village, having recently increased their numbers, this means more mouths to feed but also, more workers to gather resources. Drought, famine, flood and possible animal attacks are never far from their minds. 

No, Armstrong is not leading his students through an undiscovered wilderness, rather he is conducting a year-long self-made role-play simulation to help MYP grade 7 students understand the movement of early man’s progression toward settlement and city life. Armstrong has drawn from his love of board and strategy games as well as his experience as the storyteller or “Dungeon Master” for his many Dungeon and Dragons groups to create this immersive and interactive experience for his classes. This has been aided greatly by his newly acquired 3D resin printer, which allows students to physically accumulate representations of their progress. 

Each lesson cycle, groups made of 3 or 4 students, allocate tasks to members depending on resource needs (e.g. water is getting low). In the early game, students collect basic commodities: wood, water, berries, stone, etc., where amounts are determined by dice rolls. When enough resources are gathered, groups can use “turns” to instead make discoveries or stumble upon a big idea, i.e. agriculture, pottery, fire – each having a potential new path for exploration. For example, when wood and stone are combined in resource caches, and one stumbles upon the epiphany of flintknapping, groups can begin to explore hunting and migration. To make things more interesting, at the early stages, groups create a unique vocabulary for each new commodity. Eventually when groups cross each other, their various vocabularies initially cause confusion, but varied vocabularies also can be enlarged by other groups’ languages. A discussion or side project about world languages ensues. 

Groups have to begin to decide how they want to deal with other groups they discover: conquer or share – giving rise to instruction about anything from resource distribution or migration to warfare. ‘Random act’ cards allow for drought, disease, etc. each which allow students to ruminate about the impact of such events on early humans. When asked what they have been learning, groups answered quickly, “economics,” “strategy,” “resource management.” One group, a bit more melancholy, quipped wise words: “Don’t go out exploring unless you have stable resources; we lost everything! Oh, and drink water.” 

Armstrong has been fine-tuning his activity for the past several years at the various schools where he has taught and hopes to eventually market the entire packaged ‘game,’ complete with crop, settlement and fire tiles, and is currently in the process of finding a distributor. Watch this space. Here are some thoughts from students. 

“It took a while, but our group had finally learned about the importance of planning ahead, making sure we have enough resources because you don’t know what’s going to happen.” 

“We recently discovered animal husbandry – so now we are going to start catching animals instead of hunting them. Hopefully we can start breeding them, then we’ll always have food available.” 

“One of our group went hunting – they never came back. We don’t know what happened to them. We don’t have to use as much food and water now because we have fewer people, but it’s harder to get the other resources without the other person.” 

“It’s crazy, like you might have no food, but another group has tons of food, and it’s just because of the way the dice rolled.”