Gimkit recently released a new mode called “Draw That” While they say it won’t be around forever, I am hopeful that it will come back as a Forever Mode, because my students and I simply love it. It’s essentially an online version of pictionary. It’s pretty simple to play: a volunteer (or a random student) selects a term from the set you chose to play with, and once they click it they have 30 seconds (or whatever length you choose) to draw the term. During that time, the rest of the class tries to guess the term. Little by little, some of the letters are revealed (the remaining letters are blanks so students can see how many words and how many letters there are). You can choose how much of the term you want revealed over the course of the round. If the term has accents in it, they will appear at the bottom of the screen for students to click on. Once the time is up, the round is over. Anyone who guessed the term correctly gets points, and the drawer gets points for every person who guessed it correctly. So far, I have been using a list of terms that are sentences starting with “Je.” They are all verbs. It’s important to remind students to think about what they are going to draw before clicking on the term, because once they click it, the clock starts ticking and a significant amount of time can be wasted if the student hasn’t thought about how they are going to draw the term.
What I like most about this game is that it’s very engaging and very easy to do with a hybrid or virtual class. I would say the only thing I don’t like about this mode is that it’s all or nothing with respect to spelling. French spelling can be very challenging for novice learners, especially with all the different accents, and I think it’s a bit discouraging when they come so close but don’t get any positive reinforcement for it. It would be great if maybe they got a certain number of points for each letter they guessed correctly. I don’t grade this, but I think it would improve students’ self confidence if they were rewarded for partially correct answers. Click here to read the full details on this mode.
Here are some photos and videos of the game in action:
A student’s interpretation of “Je joue au foot.”
Students guessing the term “Je chante.”
A video of a round in progress.
Liked this post? Subscribe by email to get future posts delivered to your inbox!
