When that Back to school time of the year comes, I always want to start light. I don’t want the first lesson or two to be too boring or to make the students study something new right away. Also, they are never in the mood for that when it comes to the first lesson for the year. I want to create an engaging, fun, entertaining first lesson where the students have a good time (with just a pinch of revision). That is when the “Write the room” game comes. It’s an active way to revise some topic and it works with almost any topic of any subject.

If you want to try the “Write the room” game with the topic “Technology devices” that is already set up, you can purchase it in my TPT shop. Click here to download! It is suitable for any age/grade, but best for 3,4,5,6 grade.

Benefits of the “Write the room” game

First of all, it is an active game, meaning the students don’t just sit on the computer all lesson long, they move a lot. They move around the room and try to find the 10 cards.

The second benefit I see is that they don’t feel the lesson as formal and as serious, as other lessons, because the activity is labeled and introduced to them as a “game”. They enjoy their time and think they are playing around, when actually, they are revising.

And one more huge benefit for the teacher is that “Write the room” is almost zero prep, meaning you can set it up in less than 5 minutes and you are good for the next 60 minutes, without wasting too much time for preparation.

How do you play the game?

First of all, you print a set of cards and a recording sheet, 1 sheet for each student. The cards have terms (in this case, technology devices) or questions, and are numbered. The teacher goes around the room before the lesson and places the cards in different places for the students to find. Each student receives a recording sheet when the lesson starts. The students start going around the room and they try to find the cards. They write down the answer to the question or the name of the term, in our case – the name of the technology device they see on the current card. The goal is to fill the whole information and see all of the cards.

In the case of my activity, after the students have found and named all of the technology devices on their recording sheet (examples: a mouse, a keyboard, a microphone etc.), they sit on a computer, they go to google.com or some other search engine and they start doing a small research. They have to find out the year of invention of each devices listed and then write that year down on the recording sheet. The goal of this bonus task is not the exact years (because some websites have different information), but the research itself, learning how to look up info in a search engine by using keywords (and not whole sentences, as people often mistakenly do).

How to make your own “Write the room” activity

It is not hard to create and set up your own “Write the room” activity.

First, you will obviously need a topic, like computer viruses, or binary code, or something else not tech-related. Second, you need a couple of terms or questions, related to the topic. Write those down on your computer, number them and then print them out and place them around the room.

Create a worksheet with empty boxes (as many as you have questions/terms) for the students and number the boxes. Print one copy fr each student. You can also make the students write those things down themselves without a worksheet, but I have found out that (at least mine do) students prefer the template. You are all ready!

If you don’t want to make your own “Write the room” but you do want to do it with your students

If you want to do the fun activity but you lack the time to create it, then I suggest you use my ready made sets from my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Click here to shop my “Write the room” activity with Technology devices

This cool activity is the perfect Back to school entertaining, fun and engaging thing to do with your students when the first lessons of the year start. Whether you create your own activity, or you use mine, I hope you have a good time with your students.