Great activity for student ownership of learning

I spent some time last week in Tom Serene's and SuzAnne Wilson's World Studies course, and wanted to let you know about a cool activity that they created that you might want to borrow sometime. I was struck that this activity might be an excellent way to assist students to learn the kind of things (like math solutions or formulas) that require a bit of practice and repetition. In Tom and SuzAnne's case, they were establishing classroom norms, protocols and behavior expectations. It was so much fun and the students were 100% engaged. Here's what they did:

Every student got a skinny slip of paper with a set of instructions on it. Students were not allowed to talk but had to silently read their slips of paper and then follow the directions. For example, one slip of paper said something like, "When someone says 'use the side door if you need to leave class during a presentation' then you should walk to the front board and write down Mr Serene's correct email address."

Tom established that this was an "Attention-paying Skill Builder" and that if any mistakes occurred (including excessive delays before the next action was taken) then the whole process would have to start back at step number 1. And he held to those rules, saying "Stop; start over" at least four times before the students got everything correct. It was edgy and competitive, but the students were aiming for perfection as a whole, collaborative group. They were very into it, every single student had a role, and they learned something while participating.