Taboo as a Definition Review Exercise

If you haven’t played Taboo before, it’s a word game where a chosen player has to describe a word so that other people can guess what it is. However, they are hampered by a list of 5 words commonly used to describe the word or phrase – they cannot use these words when trying to describe it to their teammates. For example, if the word is GROOM, the banned words might include: wedding, husband, bride, horse and clean.

This makes it ideal as a means of testing student knowledge of key terms and their definitions. You can make this a student-centred exercise by having them come up with the cards and banned words. Students will have to understand a concept well to describe it to their teammates without using common descriptors as chosen by the student group that created the card.

Procedure:

1.      Explain what Taboo is! (Might be worth bringing it in and playing a round or two).

2.      Divide your class into as many groups or pairs as you need. 

3.      Give each group a sealed envelope. Ham it up a little if you want – you can emblazon the envelope with things like ‘Mission #1’ and ‘Top Secret’.

4.      Tell them that in their envelope, they will find a word or a concept. They have to keep this secret from the other groups. In the envelope should be their word, printed on top of a blank sheet/piece of card (so there is space for their list of final taboo words). If there are many key terms for your current topic, just give your assigned groups multiple cards to create. 

5.      Give the groups 5-10 minutes to make a list of words that they would use to describe their concept. They should then select the best 5-7 (you can decide on how many descriptors you wish to make ‘taboo’).

6.      Have the students pass their Taboo card onto the next group. Each group will then attempt to convey the word to the rest of the class without using the taboo words. Obviously, groups should not partake in the guessing of their own terms! To avoid problems with this, you could label the back of each card e.g. Group 1, and when another group uses their card, Group 1 can sit out of the guessing process.

7.      Do put a time limit on the guessing – in the game Taboo, players usually have 1 minute but depending on your class and their abilities, you might want to increase this slightly.

If your class has done particularly well, it  might be worth hanging on to the cards to use as a model for other classes. You could even laminate them and use them in the future when you're particularly pressed for time. 

If Everyone Could Teleport...

Sometimes, I spend a little too much time contemplating what would happen if we all could teleport wherever we wanted to. It's a question that I like to ask my classes because it gets them thinking about consequences and knock-on effects. I assume that if we are able to teleport in the future, there would be rules and regulations but for the purposes of this exercise, we can teleport as much as we want with no restrictions. 

On a personal level, being able to teleport would be amazing - imagine popping to Morocco for a quick lunch, or heading to the Lake District during break to wind down a little - but it would change the world as we know it:

• Airlines would likely become defunct with only a few specialised outfits remaining (e.g. scenic views of Antarctica) - I mean, who would choose 32 hours in a plane when they could be at their destination in a matter of seconds?
• Many low-budget hotels would go out of business if money-conscious travellers could opt to go home at night and save on costs. I would think that some of the more expensive hotels would remain, as they offer amenities that people would be willing to pay for. 
• Would cuisines continue moving around the globe? Would you choose to go to the Indian takeaway down the street if you could go to New Delhi for lunch instead?
• Lost/stranded tourists would be a thing of the past if they could teleport straight home.
• The impact on the tourism industry as a whole?
• What impact would it have on immigration? Countries try to control the movement of people but if it's possible for people just to turn up, where does that leave us?
• What about the human impact on areas of the world where travel is restricted for environmental reasons, e.g. Gough Island?
• What impact would such accessibility to all areas of the world have on our knowledge base?
• How would we control truancy if children could teleport?
• How would we maintain control of criminals if they could teleport out of jail? Also, this has impacts for international crime as (I'm assuming) it would be virtually impossible for border control organisations to monitor movement in and out of countries. 
• What impact would victims' ability to teleport have on crimes like kidnapping and human trafficking?

These are just a few questions that mass teleportation would give rise to  - what other consequences or issues do you think it would create?