Scribblish

I am always on the lookout for games that I can add to my classroom. My criteria is that they have to involve writing and interaction, support 20 to 30 students playing at once, and take about 20 minutes - the amount of time we usually have when we have an occasional party day (Halloween, the half day before Christmas and the last day of school). It's very hard to find a game that a whole classroom can participate in and have fun with.

We had recently played Scribblish with our married kids, and I thought that it might be a fun game to try in the classroom. Working in groups of 6-8 students, students each write a phrase, then the next person draws the phrase, then the next person describes the drawing, etc., until you have 4 phrases and 3 drawings. Like any telephone game (each person only sees what the person before them drew/wrote) the end result is miles away from the beginning and very entertaining to boot. There is a timer element involved, so the action is fast and furious. I obviously didn't have enough purple rollers to go around, so we used long strips of paper (11x14 cut into 4 strips) that we folded over.

We tried this game at the end of class yesterday (the first 1/2 hour was spent sharing Zombie Haiku and 55 Fiction). It went over great. Add in a little homemade root beer to the mix, and all my students were saying it was the best party ever!