Method

Students take it in turns to build a part of a Rube Goldberg machine (where objects interact with each other in sequence - often to accomplish a simple task).

So one student might come up and say

A hammer falls off a stack of books

And the next student joins on to that:

The hammer falls onto a crystal vase and breaks it.

And so on:

The pieces of crystal slide down a funnel and into a pan on a small cooking stove.

Continue until all the students are part of the machine and/ or the task is completed.

Variations

There are many variations on this game.

1. If you’re doing it online then this is a purely descriptive game.
2. If you’re IRL then the students can act out their bit of the device much like a theatre machine.
3. You can also assign it to pairs who just go back and forth, adding onto the machine.
4. You can do it out of sequence like a non-narrative version of String of pearls - so establish the very first and very last moves in the sequence and fill in the middle bits out of order. This is brain-bending but fun.

Teaching Notes

Don’t let anyone think about it too much, this game works best if people don’t pre-plan anything.

Encourage everyone to have their move be a direct result of the last move - this is a great way to teach Yes and or Accept & Build.

If it all fall apart, it doesn’t matter. We can just make a new machine.