Colourful Ball

In my Research Methodology classes, my students needed to do an annotation of journal article for their first assignment. The assignment asked them to work in a small group, find a research journal article that they like and then annotate it. Instead of merely describing what they read, they needed to be critical by discussing the research journal article from the point of its aim, research question, methodology an methods, data collection, literature review and findings.


I received feedback from them saying it was a bit difficult to be critical and to critique the journal academically. However, I found that during the presentation, a lot of them managed to explain what they had found really clearly and also showed their critical thinking by giving their own evaluation and analysis.

Today, in the class I asked them to share their experience of doing the assignment with the whole class. Instead of them sharing by talking in front of the class, I played a game with them. I used a colourful ball. Each colour represents the following action:

• GREEN - Just share your experience
• YELLOW - Pass the ball to a friend next to you and he/she will share his/her experience
• ORANGE - Come to the front and write your experience
• BLUE - Use only 1 word to describe your experience
• RED - Sing your experience
• WHITE - Give me back the ball

After everyone clears with the rules, then I started to throw the ball. The one who catch the ball or pick up the ball while closing their eyes need to check what colour will the thumb touches. Then they need to share their experience. Luckily, I got a bunch of cool students so some of them were catching the ball, share their opinion and even sing it out loud!

I think the students enjoyed the activity based on their laughter during the activity. I just wanted them to share their experience in a different way and get the idea that even though the assignment might be difficult to do, it was actually worth it. They experienced thinking about a research journal article critically and gained new skill of critiquing the article. I believe they will find these useful in the future.

PS: Walking up to level 11 from level 2 when the lift was broken. Appreciate the lift! haha