Lesson 3.1.1 Systems thinking in the classroom: relationship circle

Relationship circle; an example

Experience shows that pupils/students understand something better, talk about it better together, can remember the content more easily and get a lot of support from the circle when telling the story back (especially those who are less strong verbally). (source).


A simple example: the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood. It goes like this:

  • the starting point is a problem, a story, a newspaper article, the content of a biology lesson, etc. In this case, the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood.
  • draw a big circle;
  • place the most important elements of the story around the circle: they should be nouns/concepts (for example; Little Red Riding Hood's fear, Little Red Riding Hood's joy, the Wolf's anger, the Wolf's hunger, the Hunter's help)
  • limit the number of elements: 5 to 10 maximum;
  • the elements must be able to increase and decrease; this is very important;
  • find an element that causes an increase or decrease in another element on the circle, for example: 'the Wolf's anger increases Little Red Riding Hood's fear';
  • draw an arrow from the cause to the effect;
  • see if the arrow can also point in the other direction and draw the arrowheads (for example, the increase in Little Red Riding Hood's fear causes an increase in the hunter's help and the increase in the hunter's help causes a decrease in Little Red Riding Hood's fear;
  • look for other relationships between the elements and draw the arrows;
  • Have students tell their story at the circle.
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