Creative
Memory
Kids love
Memory, the game where they turn over pictures of flowers, cars,
teddy bears, etc., trying to find a pair that matches. Adults
usually do much worse than kids in this game. Creative Memory
is both easier and more taxing in other respects.
The
process in this activity is pretty much the same. The group needs
to have a set of pictures. I use A6 or A7 cards for it onto which
I have glued pictures of all variations: art, news photography,
people, objects, etc.. The task for the players is not, however,
to find identical pictures but to find a relationship between
the two pictures. Sometimes this is quite apparent; more often
finding a relationship requires some creative footwork.
Procedure:
1) Let students
sit in pairs, threes or groups of four around a desk.
2) Give each
group a set of 16 to 24 picture cards and ask them to place them
face down on the desk.
3) One student
starts by turning over two pictures. If the student can find a
"connection" between the two pictures s/he can keep
them; if not, s/he has to turn over the pictures again and pass
to the next student.
4) The game
is finished when all picture pairs have been picked up.
Examples for
"related" pictures:
The kebap chef in picture 3 and the "beef" in picture
6.
The woman in picture 2 could be a vegetarian who cannot stand
(picture 1) the thought of animals bein used as food.
The "bank robber" in picture 5 is angry because he could
not crack the safe in picture 8.
But any other
explanation is accepted. Encourage the groups not to accept too
obvious pairings, e.g. No 2 is a person and number 7 is a person.
Variation:
This very challenging exercise requires that you have Internet
access in the classroom and a beamer available.
1) Project
this
website onto the screen. It shows two pictures adjacent to
each other.
2) Split the
class into two teams.
3) The task
again is to find similarities between the two pictures but this
time
v e r y quickly.
4) Students
shout out their comments. The team who has an answer first get's
a point.
5) It might
make sense to award points also for meaningful and correct vocabulary
questions such as "What is verschwommen (blurred)
in English?" or "What is quadratisch (square)
in English?".
This is challenging
for several reasons: Students have to be faster than the rival
team, overcome their shyness about shouting out their answers
without having been given permission by the teacher first and
find a creative answer.
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