Procedure:
- The students should mentally assume the role of a magician. A vivid and appealing introduction is important and stimulating, particularly for younger students.
- The students read from the board or flipchart the sentence beginnings:
“If I were a great magician, I would ensure that men, women and children would never again have to suffer from a war. For that to occur, …- I would decide that…
- I would forbid that…
- I would make sure that…
- I would stop to…
- I would continue to…
- I would never forget that…
- Alone or in pairs, the students complete in writing one or several of these sentences.
- To simplify the lesson, the instructions and the sentence beginnings could be handed out as worksheets to the students (naturally, with enough space to complete the sentences). The rest of the sentence completions could also be taken up in a later sequence or given as a homework assignment.
- The answers are then read and discussed in the class as a whole, seated in a circle. If possible, time should be allocated after the individual contributions for follow-up questions and comments.
- Final round/summary: are there points that were raised by several or many students? What could we do in order to realize many of the desired “magic spells or visions?
Variants:
- “If I were an architect, I would…”: the students imagine what their school or city would look like or should look like.
- “If I were a democratically elected politician (Variant: head of state, president, minister of justice, etc.), I would…”