Spatial Requirements: Regular classroom setup; little or no space required
Activity Type: Group
Grades: 3-12
Group Size: 2 or more
Time: 10-20 minutes

Introduction: This activity teaches the importance of teamwork and communication as we have students work in pairs where one student has to draw a picture following the instructions of another student. Students must rely on one another as they try to complete each task.

Materials:

• Blank Paper
• A pen, pencil or marker (one per pair)
• Printouts of sample drawings (See sample drawing PDF)

Activity:

Before the activity, prepare printouts of the sample drawings.

Divide the group into pairs. Have each pair sit with their backs to one another so that they cannot see what their partner is doing. Have each pair identify one person to be the drawer and the other to be the describer. Give the describer in each partnership an image from the printouts of sample drawings. (You may want to begin with simple images or shapes at first and then increase in difficulty level as wanted – Also if your pairs are close to each other you may want to give a different image to each pair so they don’t interfere with another group.) The drawer is given a writing utensil and piece of paper. Each describer must describe their image(s) to the drawer without seeing what they are drawing and without actually telling them what the image is. You cannot use descriptive words to communicate to your object.( i.e. “draw a wheel”)  You can only say shapes & location.  (i.e. for a house, you might say first draw a square, then put a triangle on top of the square, then draw a rectangle inside of the square on the right hand side of the square… etc.”) Plan on spending up to 5 minutes per round. When time is up for that round have the two partners compare images to see how close they came to drawing the actual image. At the beginning of each new round hand out a new picture and ask participants to swap roles. Do this for 2 or 3 rounds. For an optional last round, the person with the picture can now give instructions in a similar manner as in the previous rounds but this time the person drawing can ask yes/no questions and the person with the picture can watch as the drawer is drawing.

Processing the Experience:

• What were some keys to being successful in this activity?
• What was challenging with this? 
• How did you feel during the activity?
• In what ways, did we have to depend on each other? 
• Did having to depend upon your fellow describer increase or decrease the fun of this activity? Why?
• How does this activity relate to Relational Resilience?
• How is the activity like life?