It's no secret that I am a huge fan of co-operative learning structures and one of my favourites is Quiz Quiz Trade, which I blogged about here and use it regularly for vocabulary building, review and drilling, but I have also been trialling other structures this year and one I hit upon recently has gone down a storm since trying it.
Showdown is a team activity which has pupils working together, learning from and teaching one another. This is how it works:
Each team member has a mini whiteboard and pen, one of the team is the "Showdown Captain" who is identified by a little name label(fear not this role changes on each round!).
The captain chooses a question from a set of cards. I chose the vey uninspiring "translate a sentence into French".
Once chosen, all team members write their own answers on their MWB, without showing their team.
When all are done, the captain says "showdown", then all show their answers and they must discuss them to reach a consensus.
When they are happy they all agree, the Showdown Captain, leads the team in a "unique" team celebration.
Captain hands the role over to the next person to their left and all is repeated.
I let them refer to books but it depends on how you want to use it, the class, etc...
Also, as I'm trying to cut down on paper used, rather then drawing "card" I put 12 phrases on the board and give dice, the captain rolled the dice instead of drawing the card. It still worked as well as drawing a card.
