Differing Perspectives and Conflict

• Students will identify the conflicting perspectives that are starting to emerge in the play, thinking about their origins and causes.
• Students will work in groups to act out a scene from the play.

Each lesson in this unit includes a PowerPoint of student-facing slides.

The PowerPoints are intended to be used alongside, and not instead of, the lesson plans because the latter include important rationales and context that teachers should familiarise themselves with before teaching the lesson.

The PowerPoints include basic content and student-facing prompts from the lesson plans but are minimally designed because we expect teachers to adapt them to fit the needs of their students and class.

• Explain to students that before they make predictions and start reading Act Two, they will reflect on the idea of perception. Have a few volunteers define perception (without using the word ‘perceive’).
• Then ask them to respond to the following questions in their journal:
  • Have you ever noticed a difference between how you view something and how someone else does? What was it? What do you think prompted these differences? 
  • Why do you think people view the world in different ways?
  • What can be the positive and negative consequences of these different perceptions?
• Facilitate a short class discussion based on the journal questions.

• Explain to the students that they will be participating in an activity called a Tea Party. They will each be given a quotation from the play and will circulate around the room, having discussions with students they encounter about their quotations. You might play music from the early 1900s while students are circulating and pause the music to indicate that students need to pair up.
• Give each student one quotation from the Act Two Tea Party Quotations handout.
• Ask students to read the quotation on their strip of paper and imagine what the phrase might refer to and what it might suggest about what happens in the second Act of the play.
• Ask students to circulate and share what is on their strip of paper with another student. Give students one minute on a timer to have a short discussion about what is on their card, who may have said it, how it might connect to Act Two of the play, and what their predictions are for the second Act.
• Next, ask students to swap strips with their partner and to move on and have another one-minute chat with another student about their new quotations.
• Repeat this process two or three times, having students swap strips with their partner at the end of each round so they are not talking about the same quotation every round, and to encourage active listening when they are learning about their partner’s quotations.
• When students return to their seats, ask them to write three predictions about what will happen in Act Two.
• If there is time, give some students the opportunity to share their ideas with the rest of the class, perhaps using a strategy like wraparound.

• Before reading the next section of the play, consider starting with a range of warm-up drama activities. 
• Explain to students that they will be acting out a section of the play in groups. If possible, it is worth moving the tables out of the way so students have space to act out the scene.
• Divide students into groups of five and ask them to read the section from the start of Act Two (p. 27) to Mrs Birling: ‘Over-excited. And she refuses to go’ (mid p. 33). They will read the roles of Inspector, Sheila, Gerald, Mrs Birling, and Mr Birling. Encourage students not to skip over the stage directions and to incorporate Priestley’s instructions for how characters deliver their lines into their readings. You could also have a student read aloud the stage directions.
• After the groups have read, ask them to review pages 27–33 and to annotate or mark using sticky notes places in the play where the characters view the world in different ways. 
• Then, ask the groups to discuss the following questions: 
  • What differences in perspective are starting to appear between the characters? 
  • How are these differences in perspective a source of conflict?

• Come back together as a class, and ask some of the groups to share their annotations and key ideas from their discussions about the differences in perspective that they noticed. 
• Facilitate a class discussion on the following questions: 
  • What differences in perspective are starting to appear between the characters? How are they a source of conflict? 
  • What factors may be prompting these differences in perspectives? (if students need assistance here, encourage them to consider identity and power) 
• What are the negative and the positive consequences of these differences in perspective?

Ask students to discuss the following questions in pairs using the Think, Pair, Share strategy:

• How do you feel when you encounter someone who views the world in a different way to you? Why?
• What can happen if we only mix with people who view the world in the same way we do? 
• How can we overcome the conflict that can occur because of differences in perspective?