This game aims at developing a feeling for the way how status affect behaviour and, in particular, speaking.
It doesn’t require much preparation… All you need is small playing cards (use only the numbered ones). If you don’t have or don’t want to use them, you can, of course, prepare yours.
Tell your students that you are going to have a party in the classroom. To set the mood, you can bring in some balloons and play the music in the background. Then, ask each student to choose a playing card and stick it onto their forehead without looking at it so that everybody sees it but not themselves.
Tell them that they are there to celebrate something but they don’t know anybody else there. They can talk about almost everything. The only rule is that everybody has to talk to as many people as possible. In conversation, each “character” reads the status of the other (number 1 – the top, the most important person in the party and number 10 – the least wanted one) and reacts to it, acts and speaks accordingly. This means that numbers 8, 9 and 10 get compliments while number 1, 2 and 3 get nothing but requests like “Hey, bring me a glass of wine!”
At the same time, they try to find out what their own status is through others’ behaviour to them.
At the end of the exercise get the group to line up in status order -1’s at one end and 10’s at the other- and see how well they’ve identified their rank. Don’t forget to tell your students that there is no right or wrong. Just ask them to explain why they’re there. At the end of the activity you can talk about how our attitude towards people with different status alters and how it feels to be humiliated or flattered.
OzgenBagci 