Drawing can be also used to teach a skill of “being specific”.
Divide students in pairs. The students sit with their backs to each other, no one can look at what the other one is doing. Prepare a picture and give it to one student. The student is supposed to describe it and the other student is supposed to draw the same picture based on the description. At the end, compare the two pictures. Then look at the pictures produced by other pairs, and discuss why sometimes things went right or wrong.
(An example of a typical mistake: One student says “there is a monster with a big oval head”. But he did not specify how big, so the other student draws a head large 80% of the paper size. But the first student simply meant “big in proportion to the body size”, not even “greater than the body”. Or the first student says the monster has a shirt with stripes, but does not mention the direction, number, or thickness of the stripes. Etc. By the way, various monsters are typically used to reduce the shared knowledge among participants, so you need to transfer more bits of information.)
There are also two variants of the game, depending on whether the second student is allowed to ask questions, or just has to draw silently. This explains the usefulness of feedback.
Drawing can be also used to teach a skill of “being specific”.
Divide students in pairs. The students sit with their backs to each other, no one can look at what the other one is doing. Prepare a picture and give it to one student. The student is supposed to describe it and the other student is supposed to draw the same picture based on the description. At the end, compare the two pictures. Then look at the pictures produced by other pairs, and discuss why sometimes things went right or wrong.
(An example of a typical mistake: One student says “there is a monster with a big oval head”. But he did not specify how big, so the other student draws a head large 80% of the paper size. But the first student simply meant “big in proportion to the body size”, not even “greater than the body”. Or the first student says the monster has a shirt with stripes, but does not mention the direction, number, or thickness of the stripes. Etc. By the way, various monsters are typically used to reduce the shared knowledge among participants, so you need to transfer more bits of information.)
There are also two variants of the game, depending on whether the second student is allowed to ask questions, or just has to draw silently. This explains the usefulness of feedback.