Friday, February 12, 2021

i-Spy

i-Spy is a rich, simple interactive website that's like a Where's Waldo of New Zealand. You can play 5 different scenes and locate hidden animals, objects or people. I'd recommend the free play mode as the challenge mode is timed. A search icon will bring you to the general vicinity of the target with a visual cue. 

Activities like these are visually packed and not for all students, but for many can serve as "thinking with the eyes" collaborative "group plan" activities (both Social Thinking® terms) and also connect well to narrative elements of setting and action sequences. Consider researching or Google Earth-traveling to the places beforehand and filling out a setting map/graphic organizer

Saturday, February 6, 2021

Playing games with Jamboard (Whoonu)

I have been researching and using a lot of Google Jamboard recently, and realized that it provides a good "table" to play games. One of my faves ever is Cranium Whoonu, a great get-to-know-others game. In Whoonu, players have cards with activities, places, and things on them, and they make guesses about a target (rotating) player's favorite things. That player (the Whoozit) then sequences them in order from most (most points) to least favorite, and players take tokens indicating their score.

The full rules are here.


And here's a game template for you! Click to make a copy and edit to your heart's content. To use in a session, make a copy for your group, change sharing sessions to editable with the link, and share in Zoom, Google Classroom or wherever.


 
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