Roadbook Challenge: Write a Route Another Team Will Follow

Each team writes up a route around campus as a roadbook, with boxes for distance, a sketch of the junction, and a visual landmark, and another team follows it with no help. It builds precise route description skills, useful for planning and sharing real routes.

How to play

1. Sample roadbook: each box has cumulative distance, leg distance, a junction sketch with an arrow, and a note (for example, 'green lamppost on your left') (4 min).
2. Each team of four designs an eight-box route around campus, measures distances with calibrated double paces, and hides a coded cone at the end (12 min).
3. Swap: each team follows another team's roadbook at a brisk walk and marks the boxes where they hesitated (10 min).
4. Cross feedback: teams meet, explain where they got stuck, and the authors fix the confusing boxes (7 min).
5. Collect cones and sheets (2 min).

Rules

• The route can't go through closed areas, stairs without railings, or parking lots.
• Followers can only use the roadbook: no asking the authors.
• Walk briskly; no running between boxes.
• Critique the box, not the people.

Variations

Adaptations

• Visually impaired: the roadbook is read aloud and landmarks are audible or tactile.
• Wheelchair users: a route through accessible areas, with distances in wheel turns.
• Dyslexia: boxes with icons and very short phrases.

Learning goals

• Describe a route precisely using distances and landmarks.
• Follow written directions independently.
• Give and receive constructive feedback to improve a document.

Equipment for a class of 25

• roadbook sheets: 14
• pencils: 14
• cones: 14
• tape measures: 2

Teacher tip

Prepare a one-page roadbook template with eight boxes to save time. The usual mistake is using landmarks that move, like a parked car or a backpack on the ground.

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