Banned Words is an ITGS revision game that focuses on key language and technical terms. It makes for a useful lesson starter or plenary activity. In a previous post I uploaded slides for the ITGS terms related to computer hardware (section 3.1 of the ITGS syllabus). This slideshow contains all the terms relating to computer software (section 3.2 of the syllabus).
The rules are straightforward: students must guess which term one of their team mates is trying to explain. The student doing the explaining is not permitted to use any of the banned words on the slide. Usually I also ban “sounds like” options. For example, if the speaking student has the word “Keyboard” they might have to explain the term without using the words “input” or “keys”. The idea is to improve students skills when giving precise and accurate explanations and definitions. The concept is similar to Taboo(TM) or Forbidden Words(TM).
You can download the presentation from Slideshare. It has an embedded macro to randomly select a term each click until all terms are covered, so you may see a security alert from PowerPoint. (The macro doesn’t work in the embedded version below).
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