It's February; classes have dropped down to only 35 minutes each, the students are getting tired of school, and computers are starting to hate me with the different updates (or failed to update). So I decided to pull together Telephone Pictionary and have the kids go at it - a fun no tech (no computer) lesson.
Initially I did have a timer on the screen, but it worked better to just have students go at their own pace while I walked around and helped/prodded.
It went surprisingly well with my 1st and 2nd year Middle School students, though I would recommend more mid level or advanced. The lower level students struggled to write full sentences and needed prompting to draw the words they did know. Thankfully, their classmates sometimes stepped up to help too.
The trick was to remind students to fold the previous part over BEFORE they passed and to NOT peek at original sentence.
NOTE - this is for a 35 minute class, though you probably could flesh out into whole lesson.
I got there early to rearrange desks into groups of 8. First 5 minutes giving instructions, modeling with co-teacher/student, and checking comprehension. Then had them play. Some took most of the time. But those who finished early I had turn over the paper and write their own sentences and just fold the paper the opposite way. Then the last 5 minutes of class were sharing 1-2 funny ones and put desks back.
