Shape Up – Online Version
EnTeam Academic Game
Purpose
To work together while practicing and creating geometric shapes and problem solving.
Requirements
- Time: 25-35 Minutes
- Number of Players: 2 or more
- Age range: Students of any age
- Space: online
- Equipment: Video setup with internet access allowing multiple people to draw at the same time (Zoom, Google, etc.)
- Prerequisites: Ability and willingness to draw on virtual whiteboard. Introduction to geometric shapes.
How to Play
- Make sure that everyone knows how to draw on the Zoom whiteboard.
- Choose and demonstrate the shape that each team will draw.
- Form teams — at least 2 people per team.
- Set a time limit such as 3 minutes for each team to draw their shapes.
- 2 minutes to draw and when there’s 60 second left, Zoom will give students a warning and that’s when they will count their shapes.
- Each team will go into their breakout rooms and start creating the given shape.
- Each player must contribute to drawing each shape with their color.
- Teams will make as many shapes as possible in the given time period, ensuring that all players have contributed equally.
- When Zoom gives you the 60 second warning, tally up your team’s score to present to the main group and then join the main room.
- All teams return to the main room to present their scores and debrief.
- If some have a very high score, they can present for the whole group!
- Repeat in the same or different teams, creating the same shape and try to increase the score in each round.
Rules
- Everyone must draw using a different color.
- Each team member must draw at least one side of each completed shape.
- Every vertex must be connected in order for it to be scored as a complete shape.
- Only shapes that have every participant’s color are scored.
Scoring
- Score one point for each completed shape that abides by the rules.
- In the main room, add all the scores because each point belongs to the whole group.
- If the group score improves in the following rounds, you win!
Debrief Questions
The purpose of debriefing is to develop strategies that will improve your performance and to recognize how these lessons apply to everyday life. To facilitate a successful debrief, facilitators must observe participants and ask engaging questions that spark thoughtful reflection. If we don’t debrief, we don’t learn!
What happened?
What did you see? What did you hear? What was the score?
What worked? What didn’t work?
How did people feel? What issue(s) came up? What issue(s) remain?
So what?
What did we learn?
How does this experience relate to other experiences?
Why are we doing this? How is it relevant to us?
Now what?
How could we improve our score in this activity?
How can we work together better?
How could we apply lessons learned outside of the game?
Digging Deeper
- Did anyone feel reluctant to share strategies?
- Why? Are you still in a win-lose mindset?
- If we are trying to improve collective achievement, who are you benefitting when you withhold strategies from other teams?
Variations
- Require students to measure angles of shapes and adapt scoring based on the accuracy of the angles.
- Require each student to measure each side and adapt scoring based on the accuracy of each equilateral shape.
- Only score equilateral shapes.
