Can be used as an ice breaker, for topic-based discussions or to enhance creativity. Will utilize higher order thinking skills.

Students and teachers need to have their own MS Office account to access Teams. This can be centrally set-up and administered on an institutional level before being used as a regular in-class feature and a smart campus resource. See the attached Microsoft Teams Quick Start Guide for more details.

A repository/bank of GIF (or JPEG images) is also essential. Teams has an inbuilt word specific bank of vocabulary-based GIFs. That said, you can also devise your own themes, topics and images if suitable options are not found. You many also want to try different key word searches (e.g., Antarctica, South Pole) and, occasionally, slight misspellings (i.e., Antartica) in order to find a picture you like.

Step 1: The class is divided into groups

Note: Smaller groups are encouraged as these promote greater participation and engagement and decrease the possibility for technology to be misused.

Step 2: Each group has a tale to tell. Tales might be allocated in a specific way words are in Pictionary.

Step 3: Groups brainstorm how to tell their story, potentially by designing a simple storyboard.

Note: This can be done online in breakout rooms (which are randomly assigned or preset by the teacher).

Step 4: Groups choose images to retell their story to others.

Note: Groups should only select pictures at this point and not actually begin posting them.

Step 5: Groups take turns to post their GIFs on the General Teams Channel.

Step 6: The viewing group, or groups, try to guess the correct story in a limited number of turns or timeframe. They can precede guessing by asking (yes or no) questions. This stage involves turn taking.

Note: To avoid returning to the breakout rooms if running this activity remotely questions can also be raised as the story is being told via the chat/conversation function. This is also useful if the audio quality falters.

Step 7: As an extension activity, earlier hand drawn storyboards can be shared with all at the very end of the activity on the General Teams page and presented to see how closely story plans aligned with GIF tales, providing additional opportunities for discussion, Q and A and, ultimately, productive language output.

e.g., Friends go on holiday vs. (Watch out) Sharks!

Positive feedback should be offered for language use and accurate guesses and, potentially, creativity, humour and good use of images.

Microsoft Teams Quick Start Guide