A Dustbin game is great for helping students to organise ideas into categories.

Students or teachers can create up to four categories of factors. The game created by ClassTools.net then involves students dragging and dropping each factor into its correct category as quickly as possible in a "race against the clock"!

Stage 1: Brainstorming

Individual students take a topic of study and make a list of key words. Definitions are not necessary.

Stage 2: Selecting

In pairs or small groups, students come up with four category headings under which these key words could be organised.

The teacher should lead a classroom discussion after a few minutes so that a variety of ideas can be expressed. This will help struggling students to come up with ideas of their own and encourage the most able to reflect on whether their categories are the most sensible.

Stage 3: Creating

Students use the ClassTools.net Dustbin Template to organise the key topic words under each of the four headings.

Stage 4: Playing

Students can then play the game they have created!

• If the classroom only has one interactive whiteboard - in other words, students are not seating at individual work stations - the teacher could lead to class to an agreement on the four best categories as a group exercise. Individual students could then come up adding words to what they consider to be the appropriate categories. Once the game has been created in this way, the class could be organised in groups, and one person from the group plays the game at the front of the class whilst his / her team-mates shout out what they think are the correct answers. Played over several rounds, the winning group is the one who completes the quiz in the shortest possible time.