Fortune Cookie Icebreaker
Instructions
Description: In this icebreaker, quotations magnify central themes and raise issues that result in lively debate and discussion. They can be light-hearted or serious, authentic or fabricated.
Instructions:
1. Identify quotations that are appropriate for your target audience. Use the education-related quotes on the next page, or find quotations at quotations.about.com. You can also pen your own quotations under a pseudonym to add humor to your session.
2. Use the "Print this page" link on the right to print the Quotes on Education, Teaching and Learning from this site, or use a word processor to assemble your own selection of quotations in a format that makes it easy for you to cut them out into individual strips.
3. Insert the quotations in fortune cookies (or tape them to the cellophane wrapper). You’ll find that tweezers work well if you need a tool for removing and replacing fortune cookie scripts. If time is limited, simply fold the strips of paper and place them in a container.
4. Distribute the fortune cookies (or strips of paper) to individuals, pairs or teams.
5. Provide 10-minutes for participants to reflect and formulate a response (e.g. agree/disagree and/or relevance of the quotation).
6. Debrief - display each quotation on a flip chart, whiteboard, or PowerPoint slide in turn to ensure everyone can reflect on the quotation.
Extension: ‘One-minute Paper’
Invite participants to take a minute to record their thoughts that came to mind while reflecting on the quotation
"I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think."
- Socrates
"Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught."
- Winston Churchill
"The only kind of learning which significantly influences behavior is self-discovered or self-appropriated learning - truth that has been assimilated in experience."
- Carl Rogers
"The teacher if he is indeed wise does not teach bid you to enter the house of wisdom but leads you to the threshold of your own mind."
- Kahlil Gilbran
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
- William Arthur Ward.
"Everybody who is incapable of learning has taken to teaching."
- Oscar Wilde
"What I hear, I forget.
What I see, I remember.
What I do, I understand."
- Confucius
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
- Mark Twain
"Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all."
- Arthur C. Clarke
"Cogito, ergo sum." (I think, therefore I am.)
- Descartes
“Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths pure theatre."
- Gail Godwin
"There are two types of education... One should teach us how to make a living, And the other how to live."
- John Adams
"What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul."
- Joseph Addison
" The paradox of education is precisely this-- that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated."
- James Baldwin
"He who dares to teach must never cease to learn."
- Richard Henry Dann
“Apply yourself. Get all the education you can, but then...do something. Don't just stand there, make it happen."
- Lee Iacocca
"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
- William Butler Yeats