Disruptus

Disruptus is one of my new favorite games.  It’s great for Brain Breaks and to jump start brainstorming sessions.  I’ve used it with my younger and older students, and it has been a hit with all of them so far. Like Anaxi, which I reviewed here, it is produced by Funnybone Toys.  You can find it at specialty toy stores and periodically on Amazon.

The game consists of heavy-duty cards that each have a picture on them, a cube, and a timer.  You can read the instructions on the Funnybone website.  There are different versions of gameplay.  So far, my students have enjoyed just watching me roll the cube under the document camera and selecting random cards.  Then I set the timer (I think it’s about 2 minutes), and they scramble to draw or write ideas on scratch paper.  Then we share the ideas.  If you want to make it competitive, you can play it similar to Apples to Apples, where one person is the judge and selects what he or she thinks was the most creative idea.

Here are the options on the faces of the cube that you might roll:

My first graders were playing the “Create 2” and we pulled out a picture of a toilet and a picture of a steering wheel.  You can imagine the ideas they generated for combining those!

You know those early finishers who don’t have enough time, really, to start something else – but still have enough time to distract the students still working?  Put this under the document camera to think about when done, and tell them you will discuss everyone’s answers as an exit ticket, in the line for the bathroom, or any other transition time during the day.

There are lots of grins and laughs when we do this.  Most importantly, the students are exercising their divergent thinking skills which, too often, don’t get enough use during the school day.

For more activities similar to this, check out this post on Mockups, how to use Flippity for Makerspace Challenges, and these 5 Resources for Design Thinking Challenges.