Picture From Memory

This activity is a more interesting way of learning labelled diagrams, like these plant and animal cells:

Diagram of Plant and Animal Cells

Print out one copy of the diagram and enlarge it to A3. Put students into groups of around four and give each group a plain sheet of A3 paper. Get one student from each group to come up to the front and show them the original diagram for a limited time (say 20 seconds). The students then go back to their groups and try to reproduce the diagram in their sheet of A3 paper.

Then another person from each group gets to come up and see the original diagram – they then return to their groups and add what they can remember to the group’s sheet. Continue until all group members have been up to have a look – by this point their versions should be approaching the original.

You can then do a bit of a competition if you like – get the groups to swap their sheets, and then reveal the original. You can award marks for correct labelling and spelling of keywords etc. After all that they’ll probably be bored of drawing, so it’s good to have more copies of the labelled diagram reduced down for them to stick straight into their books.

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