Nib
TEACH IT TO KNOW IT - *when you teach your rule to a friend who gets it wrong, and you help them get it right, you know the rule really well.*
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Nib is a friendly boy with curly brown hair and a stripy green jumper, and he holds a colourful cube in his hand. Nib LOVES to play. But Nib has a funny way of playing.
He always gets the rule wrong at first!
The little friend has just made a rule for Wobble the die. Wobble has one side with no dots at all. Blank! So they made a rule: a blank means YOU choose how many steps.
"Nib, come and play!" they call.
Nib rolls Wobble. It lands on... the blank side!
"Oh no," says Nib, sitting down with a flump. "A blank. That means I have to stop playing."
The little friend jumps up. "No, Nib! That's not the rule!"
"It isn't?" Nib blinks. "What is it, then?"
"A blank means YOU choose how many steps!" says the little friend, very clearly, very proud.
"Ohhhh," says Nib, standing up again. "I get to choose? Can I choose three?"
"You can choose three!"
"One, two, THREE!" Nib hops forward, grinning. "Thank you for teaching me!"
Here is Nib's secret. When you have to teach your rule to a friend, you have to say it really clearly. And when your friend gets it wrong, you have to know it even better to fix it. So every time Nib plays it wrong, you learn it more.
That's Nib's silly, clever idea.
I play it wrong, you set me right - teaching a friend makes the rule stick tight!
A grown-up can play too! Make up a rule for a game. Then your grown-up can pretend to be Nib and play it wrong. Can you set them right? Say the rule nice and clear!
When the game is done, Nib gives the little friend a big high-five. "You're a good teacher," he says. And the little friend beams, feeling tall and wise, because knowing a rule is good, but teaching it is even better.
The OddBitsPals ensemble
Nib is part of OddBitsPals's distributed-narrative cast. Each character embodies a different curricular primitive; together they teach the full subject.
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OddBits
(Guide) loves what's broken — a toy that doesn't work is an invitation to invent the rule (constraint-as-invitation)
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Scrap
Brings a broken bit to fix — a board with a hole, a dice with a blank side (the broken constraint)
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Mop
Brings another broken bit — there is always something odd to make a rule for (more constraints to invent around)
