Find something that…

1) Invite everyone to turn on their webcams and make sure everyone has their settings on gallery view and hide non-video participants.

 2) Tell everyone that you're going to ask them to bring an object to the webcam as quickly as they can. The object will need to be in a particular category, and they will need to find it as quickly as possible, and show it as close as possible to the webcam so that it can be clearly seen.

 Some possible categories could be:-

-Something that begins with 'p' (or any other letter of the alphabet)

-Something that is red (or any other colour)

-something that is made of wood (or any other material)

-something that is round (or any other shape)

-something that doesn't belong to you (they'll have to explain where they got the object from)

-something that you don't like (they'll have to explain why they don't like it)

-Something that costs less than €1.00

etc..

3) Do a few rounds of this with something simple but then start introducing the rule that the last person to show a suitable object is 'out' and they should turn off their webcam for the next round. Those who are 'out' become the judges. They should notice who is the first person to show an object, and also who is the last person. The first person can choose the category for the next round, and the last person is 'out'.

Note This activity isn't just a motivating warm up activity. It's also a great way to raise awareness about how objects can be shown in close up in remote theatre plays, and how effective this can be.

Variation Instead of actually finding the object, students could be asked to write a word for the category and hold it up to the webcam. This works well with lexical sets (for example ‘positive adjectives to describe people’) Here you could introduce another rule to generate as much vocabulary as possible; if anyone repeats a word that is already on screen they are also eliminated.