Like the party game, this competitive "Pictionary" activity is a fun way to get students thinking together! Use this to review material before a midterm or final exam. Students need to “draw” their understanding of a concept, topic, event, etc., and their teammates need to guess the answer.
Steps
- Before class create a list of terms, concepts, events, etc. – key terms that might come up on an exam. Print these out or write them on index cards ensuring that you have enough of each term so that you can give the same terms to each group.
- Devise a points scheme, e.g., first round win equals 500 points, second round is 1000 points, and so on and think of prizes for the winning teams (e.g., candy, bonus points on the exam). Make the terms more difficult in successive rounds.
- Arrange students into groups. Ensure enough space so that a member of each group can be up at the whiteboard at the same time (probably max. 4–5 groups in most classrooms).
- Pro Tip! Having too many groups also makes it difficult to keep track of who wins each round.
- Variations: if you want to have more but smaller teams, have only half of the teams participating in each round. The other teams can watch. Use a timer and allow the observing teams to “steal” the points if none of the playing teams gets the answer.
- Ask for one volunteer from each team to come to the whiteboard. When they come to the board, hand them the paper/card with their term on it.
- Variation: give each member of each team a number. Ask all the “1s” to come up, etc.
- Direct the players to draw their concept on the board (no writing words, no talking). As they draw, their teammates need to guess the correct answer.
- First team to answer correctly wins the round!
- Repeat as many times as you want.
Photo by Mark Rabe on Unsplash
