Pictionary in a Technology Based Classroom

I have missed  A LOT of time in my classroom in the last two weeks. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend METC for three days…which was awesome. Then, my youngest daughter was sick and needed her mommy. Next, a round of winter weather slammed our area and we had a weeklong snow-cation.

As happy as I was to have the break, my students desperately needed some review.

The unit we are discussing now in American Government is vocabulary intensive. We’re learning about the ins and outs of the Legislative Branch, which includes terms many of my students have never encountered such as Logrolling, Pork Barrel Spending, Pigeonholing, Gerrymandering, and the like.

How do I review these concepts with my students?

I could give them a matching worksheet…ick.

I could have them create flashcards for review using Flippity…which I will most likely use for an end of the unit activity before their test.

Then I thought about how I could “techify” the old fashioned game of Pictionary…my students love to make fun of my artistic ability. Or, lack thereof.

I believe there is educational value in playing Pictionary. The students have to create visual or non-linguistic representations of their vocabulary terms, which requires them to not only understand the term, but to create an image describing the term!

Since I use an iPad for instructional purposes in my classroom, I decided to use my Educreations whiteboard app for this activity.

The result?

Great!

Students worked cooperatively, discussing the term and how they could visually represent the definition.

They were engaged because, I mean come on, they were able to use my iPad 🙂

As each group “drew” their definition, the class tried to guess the term. As they did so, they were defining the term and explaining why the picture was representative of the term.

It was great!

Some of the visual representations were quite a stretch, but I am definitely not one to judge when it comes to artistic ability 🙂

I’ll be sure to post an example of my wonderful artwork to Twitter.

Thanks for reading!