1. Create your picture in Google Sheets (or Excel if you prefer). Get it exactly how you want it to look once the students have correctly completed the activity.
2. Go over several rows from your picture and start typing your questions. In this case I had sentences that I wanted students to complete, but it could be anything from a math problem to a factual questions. You just need to have a defined answer that everyone will type the same. Place one question per row. 3. In front of your questions color the box where you want students to type their answer. Students must type the correct answer, in the correct box, for the picture to "magically" appear. 4. Now you're ready to start conditionally formatting your picture. Go over to the picture and randomly select however many cells you want to tie to the first answer. Be sure all of the cells are the same color! 5. In order to help myself remember which cells I'd already done I first changed the selected cells to white. 6. Click on Format, Conditional Formatting. 7. Click "Add Another Rule" 8. In the Format rules box click the down triangle and choose "Custom formula is." 9. In the box enter the formula: =$Y$3="Who's" The Y is the letter of the column where the answer will be typed. The 3 is the number of the row where the answer will be typed. Inside the quotation marks is the text for the correct answer. If your answer is numerical it does not require quotation marks. 10. Choose the color you want the cells to turn. 11. Click done. 12. Repeat steps 4-11 for each of the questions you've created, being sure to conditionally format all of the cells in your picture. You can test your work by going through and typing the answers in the boxes and watching the picture appear. When incorrect answers or typed, or correct answers are typed incorrectly, nothing will happen and the boxes will stay white (or whatever color you set them to be).
The first time I created a mystery picture I fell into the trap of recreating digitally what I had on paper. I made every cell correspond to an answer (80 questions for an 80 cell picture) and every answer correspond to a color (all of the "am" answers were blue). The great thing about digital is that you are freed from these restrictions. You can make every answer correspond to as many or as few cells as you choose (just remember they all have to be the same color). You can also make any answer be any color, even if it wasn't that color previously (hence my activity has two possible answers but three different colors). The digital format opens up a lot of possibilities!
My students already enjoy mystery color pictures and I can't wait to see their response to the digital version! Want my mystery picture activities? Use the buttons below! Want a free digital color activity? Sign up for my e-mail list on the right and you'll get a force a copy link for my present tense to be mystery picture!
17 Comments
Sandra Douglas
8/11/2020 05:32:56 am
Find the idea of making these specifically for my grade really exciting
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Elisabeth Bowman
8/11/2020 06:47:48 am
I'm glad! I'd love to see what you create!
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10/21/2022 06:32:38 am
That's great, Marcus! For more DIY activity posts, see my new website: https://thegaminggrammarian.com/category/diy-activities-materials/
Seema
10/26/2020 04:38:08 am
Wow pretty amazing..can’t wait to try it out
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LMichelle Fielder
3/24/2021 07:36:50 pm
Thanks so much! Very easy to follow!
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Krysta
3/25/2021 11:26:02 am
Hey! Is there a way to check answers?
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Elisabeth Bowman
3/25/2021 01:00:37 pm
The easiest way is to look at the picture--if it's complete the answers are all correct, if not there's something wrong. You can also opt to add conditional formatting to the boxes where the answers are typed. If the answer is typed correctly the box can turn green. Check out my new blog for other digital mystery pictures and conditionally formatted activities, such as self-grading digital task cards. https://thegaminggrammarian.com/2021/01/20/self-grading-digital-task-cards/
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Em.
4/29/2021 09:51:29 am
Hi! I'm just a little confused... How did you select multiple at a time? Whenever I try to it just changes over to the cell I clicked on and doesn't do anything with the last cell I clicked on?? Please help!
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Elisabeth Bowman
4/29/2021 10:19:20 am
In order to select multiple cells, hold down the ctrl key while you click. That will allow you to select multiple cells that are not necessarily right next to one another. You can find more tips, and better contact options for me, at my new blog: https://thegaminggrammarian.com/
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Lena Collins
11/11/2021 06:21:46 am
I have a teacher at my school using and creating mystery pictures. The students are deleting the conditional formatting by accident which makes the picture incorrect. Is there a way to lock the conditional formatting so that the students cannot change it?
Reply
11/11/2021 06:38:33 am
I'm trying to envision how a student would delete the conditional formatting by accident. To change conditional formatting you have to purposefully click in multiple places. If this is truly an accidental occurrence, one option would be to use a drop down menu for the answer choices. Students click on the carrot (usually a v shape in the corner) and click on their selected answer. I have a tutorial for how to do this with self-grading task cards on my current site ( https://thegaminggrammarian.com/2021/10/06/homophone-sghoul-self-grading-task-cards-with-drop-down-menu-how-to/ ). It would be easy to apply the drop down menu option to digital mystery pictures as well. Of course, this would only work if you have a given set of options, but it does require less manipulation of keys by students. If this is not an accidental occurrence, it's going to be more difficult to prevent. I've tried locking cells and sheets, but this has either been overridden when I shared the file, or prevented them from doing what I needed them to do. I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help.
Reply
2/18/2022 06:10:09 am
Thank you for the compliment! I'm sure the class really enjoyed your mystery picture. Check out my new website for even more ideas and how-to's. www.thegaminggrammarian.com
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