Teacher for Teacher lesson plan submitted by: 
TEAM Slovenia
​for the Thinking Otherwise project

Key Idea

​​To use a visit to the museum of illusions, in order to relate first hand experience of visual illusions to the role of social media in creating illusions and unreal expectations for daily life.

Who is it for?

Age range: 12-14 years

Key Learning

• To change students’ preconceived ideas about what they think they see and the reality behind illusions (therefore, the title Things Ain’t What They Seem). 
• To increase understanding of how illusions and deceptions are not always for pleasure and are often perpetrated online.

What do I need?​

• Examples of optical illusions: ​www.illusionsindex.org/illusions
• ​Transport, museum entry fee, camera/mobile phones

How long does it take?​

Half a day - 3 hours​

Step 1 - Introduction​

Provocation: Pose the question ... Do you believe things are the way they seem?

Allow thinking time and accept responses, before showing an optical illusion, such as Rubin's vase:  a picture of two reversible figures/faces on each side and an empty space between them in the shape of a vase.

• What do you see?
• Discuss how visual perceptions can differ from reality.
  
• Pose questions, such as: 
  
• Are our senses sometimes deceived? 
  
• Can you interpret an image in two different ways? If yes, why? ... If not, why not?
  
• Can some images be ambiguous?
  
• Do you know what the Ames room looks like?
  
• Do you know colour dove illusion? ​
  

Allow time to research illusions and chose one to share.

• Can they see both images within an illusion, when they are told it is there?

Step 2 - What Next?

Visit a Museum of Illusion, upside down house or even a hall of mirrors at a fairground.
Encourage students to explore how their senses can be fooled by optical and various mirror illusions.
Photograph examples of illusions on school camera/mobile phones, if permitted.
​Support students to explore all aspects of the facility  such as upside-down room, wooden construction puzzles, vortex, to safely experience distortion and disorientation. Use photo opportunities to create different pictures according to their imagination.​

Step 3 - Reflect and Evaluate

On return to school, connect the illusions created by at the museum with the illusions created by social media through photo editing, promotion of glamorous lifestyles, perceptions of happiness, beauty, popularity, etc.

• Are the photographs taken at the museum true or false?
  
• Do we always realise we are being deceived?
• What is meant by the proverb “Looks can be deceiving?”
  
• Are tricks and illusions always fun?
  
• How can we be caught out by deception in every day life/online?
  
• How can this be damaging to self esteem? our health? our beliefs or behaviour?

Photos taken at the Upside-down House in Estonia

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