If your family was anything like mine, game nights were the highlight of your week. And lucky for you, they happened multiple times per week. Games were so vital in my childhood and adolescence and still are in my adulthood. As much as I liked game night at home, I especially liked it at school. One of my favorite games to play at home was Pictionary, and I was extremely interested in how I could use Pictionary in my teaching methods.
If the class has vocabulary necessary for the curriculum, which I think most classes do, Pictionary is a great way to get students to learn the words. The ordinary Pictionary cards can be subbed out for those associated with class. The words can be those from vocab lists and the categories can be changed to accommodate different categories within the classroom (verbs, adjectives, place, people, etc.) The cards can be added on to throughout the year so that the students are receiving a cumulative review each time they play.
This could be especially useful in foreign language classes such as my future class. I can use vocabulary, as previously stated, to get students to learn new french words. However, I can also include other things on these cards to help them understand course content. For instance, concepts such as holidays and french foods can be put on cards for students to draw. If the card says "Bastille day" the student would have to draw a military parade, the champs-elysees, and fireworks to get the other team to guess which holiday it was. This will help students learn what traditions are associated with what events. For the foods, if I were to write "Croque monsieur" on a card, which is a traditional french dish served in cafés, the student would have to draw bread+cheese+ham and potentially coffee to get the other student to guess which food it was. Another dimension could be added to this if the student drew where the food originated from in france (drawing the region of france).
Another idea is to keep tis game completely unrelated to course content. I think games are important regardless of their "academic content." Pictionary, no matter the content, will require to students to take their knowledge and put it down on paper in the form of a creative drawing. This will challenge their brains as they try and figure out a concept that may be easy to describe with words but hard to convey in a picture. Additionally, students will have to work together. The teams will need to work together to figure out what is being drawn and make educated guesses. Pictionary also teaches the value of time. When it is imperative to accomplish a task before a specified amount of time runs out, the students learn how to work quickly yet effectively under the pressure. Playing hte game without "academic content" will allow students to "de-stress" their brains. Being in school for 7 hours a day is cognitively tiring especially when one is just transitioning from subject to subject without any real mental break in between. This is a way to give students the release they need before reeling them back in for content related course work.
Yes, I realize Pictionary is "old-school" and there are new games that could be used like apps, computer games, video games, etc. However, I think there is a certain joy and humility is going back to the basics. The basics allow students to escape the technology that is constantly involved in their lives, and interact with other humans and a pad of paper for a little while.
Leah, I'm glad that you went "old school," and I am really pleased with the rich investigation you undertook as you re-examine this familiar game through your teacher's eye. If I'm understanding, you're suggesting that playing Pictionary in your classroom has the potential to reinforce vocabulary and other important ideas from your class content, but that you also see the potential to support other learning goals. These might include a kind of translation work (taking a word or concept and rendering it visually) and an "authentic" kind of collaboration. I also like your mentioning "educated guesses," Leah. My feeling is that the idea of making educated guesses is an underrated and sometimes unnoticed intellectual activity in which we engage. Recognizing that we do indeed make "educated guesses" all the time is a really important step. In your field, I think about the literal act of translation...say, the lyrics of a French song. Given French lyrics and a video, how might a group of students attempt a translation into English? What kinds of knowledge and experience might the students leverage, even if their initial response is that they can't do the task...educated guesses.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, there's a lot here in your post, Leah...keep thinking about all of this, okay?
I think that is a really interesting comment and idea, Jeff. I do agree with you that we make educated guesses all of the time in our daily activity. We guess how long it will take us to get somewhere based on our idea of traffic flow, the suggestion from mapquest, and our general idea of where we are going. We guess how long it will take us to accomplish a task we have done before - how long will a blog post take me? We guess what ingredients will taste good together and how much to put together in a meal. I think I am getting into more of a knowledge domain than a guessing domain for some, so I will stop there. But I think that guessing is extremely relevant when referring to a world language. Every time a French student/speaker that is not truly fluent sits down to read something, there will generally be at least one word that they are unsure of. The speaker needs to read around the word, get the general meaning of the phrase or paragraph, and make an educated guess as to what the word means. Nodding to the specific lesson example you gave, I think it is a wonderful idea. I actually feel like I may have done this in one of my French courses throughout the year. We listened to a rap song which had a lot of slang we didn't know in it, watched the video, and had to speak and write about what we thought it symbolized. A student may think this is impossible but it is actually fun and completely doable. They may not be able to translate it into English, but they will be able to get the general sense. I think in some way, that may be better than translating it word-for-word into english because the inverse of that is what we are trying to get away from - Writing a paper in english and trying to change it word-for-word into french. Thanks for the comment and ideas, Jeff!
ReplyDeleteI love board games! I'm slowly building up my collection. We shall play one day. I'm unsure if I'll be able to use pictionary for my chemistry or physics classroom. Well actually maybe I can. I could give a team a story problem. One person will draw the problem and the other person will solve it. It would pull together the visualization techniques from Reading Apprenticeship as well as communication and vocabulary since they will need to know how to represent variables. GREAT IDEA MS. STILLMAN! I'm putting that on my EVERNOTE page of teaching activities. Yes I do have it.
ReplyDelete