A to Z Game of review

This simple game from childhood makes a very good game of review or a recap.

It can also be used as an assessment test of gauging how much have the participants learnt and understood from the session.

Time required for this activity is a minimum of ten to about thirty minutes.

Number of participants can vary from ten to hundred.

A to Z is played with paper and pen, preferably with some music played in the background.

Game instructions

The game can be played as a team game where the participants are divided into teams with equal members, or individually.

Instructions are simple! When the music starts , the participants need to write the letters of Alphabet from A to Z on paper.

Against each letter then, one writes in some concept which one has learnt in the training session. For e.g. In an introductory session of ID what someone could write would be:

A: Affective Domain, Activity Learning, Adult learning theory

B: Bloom’s taxonomy…..

…..

K: Kirkpatrick’s Model,

L: Learning Domain…..etc

The list needs to be as exhaustive as possible with as many numbers against each letter.

Light music in the background can make the game lively.

When the music stops the participants stop writing and exchange papers. The one with the maximum number of words written, wins!

Debrief :

After the winner is declared, the trainer reviews all the words together with the class, writing them together on a flip-chart or the board, if required. Then the concepts which are not clear to some, are explained and reinforced again.

There could be discussion and elaboration of the same depending on the time available.

This simple game helps one remember and recollect all that has been learnt. It also gives an idea to the trainer how much has been learnt.

Collective knowledge received from the adults is used as a material for review and reinforcement!

So you want to do activity-based training?

Some years back, there was a Team motivation Training Workshop which I was a witness to!

The venue of the Workshop had been chosen with great care – verdant Goa in rains…

The training weekend was planned carefully: loads of group, pair and individual activities to keep the participants engaged, Sales Presentations (loaded with enough figures to give the team a reality check of the last quarter) and the mandatory evening-bonding-over-beer session!

The participants seemed to having a good time…

However it was clear that the sessions were merely activities masquerading as learning.

In an attempt to appease the audience and be rated well by the group, the trainer had forgotten the second key element of the Magic Formula ( FUN* CONTENT =RESULT) of getting results in a training Workshop : to load the relevant content to the FUN activities!

SO what I saw was a whole host of competitions and activities which seemed to have been added for fun and enjoyment rather than make the audience reflect, learn and plan ahead for the future (which was the eventual objective of the Workshop).

Whilst I do not have anything  against such games/activities in isolation, according to me to get impactful results in training programs, it is critical to balance and interweave both relevant content and FUN, appropriately!

FUN is not some thing that ‘do’ different from the content. It is not something that you ‘do’over and above your training program. It is what you integrate and assimilate as  a part of the program…

So if you just have a long, data loaded, information-packed session where there is no activity, engagement or involvement of the participants or a free for all activity-saturated round where there is an absolute mayhem in the room and no message… either would fail !

In the Magic FORMULA for learning, absence or dearth of either of the above elements ( FUN or CONTENT) would dilute the impact of the session and make the end result in the given equation, zero!

In short, as Rosemary Clark, an education consultant says, “I am not suggesting that active learning is a bad thing. Quite the reverse! Active learning is essential for developing cognitive skills. I am suggesting that it is tempting to confuse physical activity with active learning. Unwarranted physical activity in class may be no more than a distracting displacement activity, giving the illusion of learning but failing to develop understanding.”