Heads Up in Algebra 2

I have the Heads Up app by Ellen Degeneres on my phone.  I heard from someone on Twitter that you can make your own set of cards.  I think I paid $4.99 for the Heads Up ad and then it cost 99 cents to make my own deck.  I added 50 words from Algebra 2. 

I am very lucky in my class to have Apple TV and a thrown projector.  I could use airplay on my phone to make it huge on the board.  I brainstormed with my student teacher how to play it with the whole class.  I have my desks in 6 groups of 4-5 students.  We decided to just us that.  The group would decide who would stand up front and be the guesser and the other students in the group would try to describe the word.  The guesser would hold my phone on their forehead.  They have one minute to try to guess as many words as they can.

I was very excited to try it.  I emailed our vice principal and invited him to stop by and see something fun.  I invited our computer guy and asked him to come by too.

I put it on the agenda as ALLA: Surprise!  This was happening during block period.  That means we have 1 hour of class, then lunch, then back for 20 minutes of class.  This was when we were going to play.  A few students asked me right away what the surprise was.  I responded with the usual: "If I told you then it wouldn't be a surprise."  One student hates surprises but I made her wait.

We got to have all 6 teams go.  They did well.  Then there was time for 3 more teams to go again and try to beat their own time.  It was really fun.  Nice and easy and fun to hear them try to describe words like integer, rational, determinant. 

Here is a picture of one student.  I liked the idea of the big word behind them so all the kids could see it.  (It's a bad picture of a picture on my ipad because my students were using my phone.)
I recommend giving it a try.  It's worth the risk!