Think-Thank-Thunk

A couple of weekends ago a colleague of mine related to me a conversation she’d had with some elementary teachers. The topic of the conversation was a specific icebreaker game called “blanket drop.”

According to these teachers, girls are always better at this game than boys. Hands down. No contest. They went so far as to say, “Never make teams of boys against girls for this game. The girls will crush them. Every time.”

They were emphatic that this is true, but had no idea why.

Understanding my passion for the topic of sex differences, she thought I might have the answer. Indeed, if you read the literature, it won’t take long for you to find the research that supports this observation.

But still–I wanted a little proof. So I tried it in my own room. Then, I wanted a little more proof. So yesterday, in a call for data, I shot out the following email to all staff here in St. Croix Falls. If you’re reading this, and you teach, please consider taking part in my admittedly unscientific (but still totally cool and fun) research.

Here’s the email:

Hello everyone,

I’ve stumbled upon a topic that is fascinating me: brain-based gender differences.

Recent research has shown some striking differences between how boys and girls sense and interpret the world around them. I think this is so interesting that I am inspired to do a little research of my own. I’m not replicating this study, so I’m not sure what the data will show. I’ve heard some pretty remarkable (undocumented) observations though–so I just thought I’d see if I might be able to back it up with some hard data.

That’s where you come in.

I started this “research” in my class today (8th grade) but I’m realizing my data set is way too small to be confident about my results. I also have some suspicions that age may play a factor.

So if you’re willing sometime, I would love if you would play this game in your class and keep track of the results. Many of you have probably played this in the past.

Blanket Drop (estimated time: 5-10 minutes). Here’s how:

1. Divide your class into two teams–boys vs girls.
2. Have two people hold up a blanket and have the teams stand or sit (sitting worked better for 8th graders) on each side of it so that they can’t see the other team.
3. Have one person from each team sit in a chair in front of their side of the blanket.
4. The two people holding the blanket, drop it (I found on a count of 3 works well).
5. The first to say the other person’s name wins a point for their team.
6. Keep a tally and email me your results. First team to 10 works well, but run it however you like. I just want the tally.

I’ve heard that, at least at the elementary level, girls are much (again undocumented) better at this than boys. I’d like to prove that out.

My limited results today show girls are somewhat better in 8th grade. Girls won 36 times. Boys won 25.

I would greatly appreciate if you could find the time to play this game with your students and record your results sometime before the end of the year. Like I said, I am very curious to see if results change as students age, so I’m encouraging everyone to participate. This is NOT an official action research project, just something I’m curious about. Maybe now you are too.

One thing that might also be interesting (though it didn’t occur to me to record this until we were done) would be if you would also keep track of ties. My 8th graders had a lot of ties. I’m thinking the number of ties might also correlate with age. But again, I really have no idea.

I will share our collaborated results in a weekly email as I get additional data.

Thank you in advance for considering to take part in my little experiment!

Chris

P.S. I have a blanket you can borrow if you need one.

If you’re still reading, I’d love to hear from you. Please try this game in your own room and share your results in a comment below. Or maybe you’ve had some other interesting experiences that illustrate (perhaps unexpected) differences between the sexes.