by Natasha Azank and Richard Sonnenmoser

We used this “famous pairs” activity on the first day of class as both a way for students to get to know each other and to introduce the idea of context(s). It’s a good ice-breaker, but can also be used with almost any unit to get students to think about audience, purpose, context, and specificity. For the first unit, we wanted to get students to think about the ways in which we identify others and ourselves according to the contexts and the roles we occupy. For other units, it can be used to discuss the importance of asking helpful questions, considering audience, and to emphasize specificity. The activity is divided in to three parts:

  1. Before students introduce themselves to one another, they have the name of a person or thing taped on to their back (see names below). They then have to get in groups of three and attempt to figure out who or what they are. Each student has to ask a series of questions that their group members can only respond to with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. For example, students could ask, “Am I a woman? Am I a politician? An actress?” etc. until they discover who they are (if some have a very hard time figuring it out, group members can start to give hints).
  2. Once everyone discovers who they are, they have to find their pair. For example, Bill and Hilary Clinton, peanut butter and jelly have to find each other. After they find each other, they spend a few minutes introducing themselves and have to find out three interesting things about their partner that they will share with the class as a way of introducing them (this part can be eliminated if it is not being used as an ice breaker).
  3. After everyone is introduced to the class, all the pairs have to find the larger group (or context) that they belong to (ie, TV couples, food, etc). In these groups, they discuss what sort of questions they used to discover who they were as an individual, pair, and then larger group, and determine what types of contexts these questions pointed to. This then leads to a larger class discussion about the contexts we use to identify ourselves, which often start out as broader cultural categories, and usually become more local and specific. You can also talk about audience here and how the questions they asked might be different if they were asking their parents or teachers rather than their friends.

Below is a list of the categories and “famous” or well-known pairs to go with them (which can be easily modified).