Back Art

Topic Area: Communication

Concept: Saying what you mean and hearing what is said are problems that we have in any communication between two people. You can imagine how these problems can escalate when you have more than two people involved. An example would be a comment or set of instructions that passes through a number of people and the interpretation that each person puts on the information. Rumors are certainly a good illustration of this problem; they seem to grow bigger and better with each telling.

Method: Classroom Activity

Time Frame: 15 to 20 minutes plus discussion time

Materials Needed: A pencil, magic marker or crayon for each group of five to six people

Five or six blank pieces of notebook sized paper for each group of five to six people

Activity: Divide your class up into groups of five to six people. Have each group sit in a single file line facing the front of the room. This can be done sitting on the floor (my favorite), sitting in chairs or even standing. The last person in line from each team, meets with the teacher and is shown a picture to draw. All the teams are shown the same picture, at the same time. After seeing the picture, they go back to their team and place themselves at the end of the line.

At the starting command, they use their finger to draw the picture that they saw on the back of the student in front of them. Once they are done drawing, the person in front of them tries to draw the same thing on the back of the person in front of him. This continues until it reaches the first person in line. He draws what he thinks was drawn on his back onto a piece of paper. When he finishes drawing, he raises his hand and puts down his pencil and turns his paper over so no one else can see his drawing. The teacher notes the order that the teams finished.

After all of the teams have finished, each picture should be held up for the team and class to see how well they did. The teacher should hold up the original so the drawings can be compared. The picture of the team that finished first should be checked by the teacher or judge to see how closely it resembles the original picture. If it is close enough in the eyes of the judge, then that team gets a point and the game goes to the next round. If the picture is not good enough, the next place team is judged. For the next round, each person moves up one chair towards the head of the line so everyone will get a chance to play all of the positions. Be sure to have enough pictures that everyone will have a chance to be in all of the positions.

The teams may not ask questions about what is being drawn on their backs. They should also be encouraged not to look at the other teams to see what they are drawing. The pictures you choose to have them draw should be fairly simple. Some suggestions would be a star, house, flower, tree, boat, letter of the alphabet, happy face, sun, lightbulb, etc.

What did you see happening during this activity?

How did you feel when you were the person who started the drawing?

How did you feel when you were in the middle of the line?

How did you feel when you were the person drawing on the paper?

What made this activity hard to accomplish?

Why did the picture look different at the end than it did at the beginning?

What would have made this activity easier to accomplish?

What can this activity tell us about communication?

What are some of the ways that the facts of a story get changed?

What are some of the consequences of information being changed?

Does it make any difference in the end whether the information was changed on purpose or by mistake?

What steps can we take to be sure that information is not heard or told incorrectly?

Whose job is it to be sure that information gets passed along correctly? The person doing the talking or the person doing the listening? Why?