Mood Cards

summary

everybody picks a card

time

10’

preparation time

1’ if you have the cards

group size

up to 15

material

cards with colourful images

How it is done

  1. Place 20 cards (more than there are participants) in the classroom

  2. Ask each participant to pick a card

  3. Everybody explains why they picked it.

Comments

This activity can be done at the beginning of a course. It helps participants to leave behind whatever mental load they bring to the classroom.

It also works as a temperature check in the middle of a course, before or after discussing difficult topics.

Besides warming up the group, you may receive some information about their background or experience. The activity is very much open ended and mainly makes the participants feel welcome.

Preparing the cards

I have a set of postcards that I have collected over the years.

At the beginning of a programming / ML course, you could have images like:

  • a line plot

  • a self-driving car

  • a rainbow flag

  • a robot

  • a person with an anti-ai-camo mask

  • Andrew Ng

  • Ada Lovelace

  • the Fibonacci spiral

  • the Mandelbrot set