[mesmark]

If you could only play one game in your English classes from here on out, what would it be? and why should the rest of us choose that game?

I play an inexcusable amount of Bingo. So, I'm going to have to go with Bingo.

Bingo is a great game for practicing questions/answers as well as negatives. Children want to draw the cards themselves, so I make Bingo a guessing game. As an example, for occupations:

One students takes a card and asks the other students 'What's he?' The other students guess 'Is he a mailman?' 'Yes. He's a mailman. / No. He's not a mailman.'

This will work across the board for almost any vocab set varying the question/answer. ex. Verbs - Do you want to read books? No, I dont wanna./ Ya, that sounds like fun.

[Eric]

I would choose the Slam Game.

This is good for practicing new vocab, short sentences and even questions.(ie. ball, He has a ball., What does he have?)

Materials
Flashcards (4 - unlimited)
Tables (arranged to form semi circle or 'U' shape

How To Play

• Divide the class into 2 teams
• Arrange the desks into a semi circle
• Line up each team at the end of each semi circle.
• Layout between 4 & 8 flashcards around the perimeter of the semi circle.
• When you say "Go" one student from each team slams each flashcard and says the language you intended to practice. The students keep slamming and speaking moving around the semi circle, toward the other team.
• When the 2 students who started finally "run into each other" they stopsaying the cards and they have a Rock Scissors Paper "Showdown".
• The winner continues slamming flashcards in an effort to reach the other team.
• The loser goes to the back of the line of their own team.
• A point is scored when a student slams all the cards and reaches the other team.

I usually play to 3-5 points, depending on the difficulty of the language. This game is great if you have a class that is quiet or you have students who don't speak a lot. Eventually the excitement of the game will make the quietest students scream the answers.

Great thread!

[little sage]

Mesmark,

Great variation of Bingo, making it conversational!

I think the game I'd pick for myself if I had to choose only one would be Go FISH! Like Bingo, it can be played with almost any vocab set, as long as you have a large enough set of paired cards. Not for large classes, though.


A Go Fish refresher:

-Shuffle a set a word cards and deal out about 6 to every student.

-Put the remaider in a messy pile in the center of the desk.

-Choose a question stem that matches the vocabulary.

-Have students put any pairs of cards that they are dealt face down on the table: each pair of cards is worth one point.

-Each student, in turn, asks another random student sitting anywhere in the group, a question in the hopes of finding a match to one of the cards in their hand. *Make sure the questioner clearly states the name of the person they are talking to.

-Instruct the students that when someone asks "Tara, do you have a frog?", IF Tara has the matching frog card in her hand, she MUST answer yes to the question and then give the card to the questioner. If Tara does not have the match, she answers No and the questioner "goes fish", choosing one card at random from the remainder pile.

-When a student pairs up all their cards and their hand is empty, they can choose a card from the remainder pile and continue to play.

-When all cards are paired up, students count their pairs. The person with the most pairs wins.


Examples:

Food cards: "Sarah, do you want a taco?" "No, I don't. Go Fish" or "Yes. Here you are"

OK. That's a decidedly weird conversation. If that troubles you, you could change the sentence stem to the standard "Sarah, do you have a taco?" "Yes, I do/ No, I don't" OR "Excuse me, Sarah, can I have a taco ?" "Sorry, I don't have one." or "Sure, here you are."

Job cards: "Jason, do you want to be a ballerina?" "Yes, I do/ No, I don't" (See, quite funny if some macho boy has to answer yes.)

Variations:

For a class of 10 young kids (too many for a card game, frankly) I kept them at their desks in pairs and dealt out 6 cards per pair of students. They whispered to each other to prepare their question and to decide who they would ask. It became a kind of team game, but still just as fun. Great for listening and remembering practice.

So, that's my choice. A nice, quiet card game .

[troysoon]

I would go with a game I stole from a Korean game show. I call it in English "Tell me 4 ..." The teams are divided to have at least 4 people (Usually I have more than 4 on a team because my classes are big. And I also played with teams with less than 4 people. But 4 is the ideal number.) Anyway, I say "Tell me 4 ..." (of something;i.e., colors, sports with no ball, languages spoken in Europe, etc., etc.) Each person on a team should tell me 1 of the 4. This game can get loud but I have had much success in everyone joining in. The students must listen to each other and also think individually.

[Eric]

welcome to the site, troysoon!

nice game. i have one question. do you keep score? and if so, does a team get a point if they are the first team to tell you 4 things?

eric

[troysoon]

Yes, I guess I didn't remark about scoring. I do give one point to the team who is able to give me 4 things from four different people within a time limit. I give between 3-5 seconds to answer. Also, while the team is answering team members should not give help. If it is not their turn, they can offer help to a team member who does not know an item.

[fishead soup]

Chinese Whispers-It is a good speaking activity. It involves the whole class. No one is sitting idle waiting for others to participate. In a relatively short time you can practise many different expressions. It can fit any text based program and it can be used to study for University entrance exams. What more do you need.

[mesmark]

I probably should know or might know it as something else, but what is Chinese whispers?

[fishead soup]

Quote mesmark

I probably should know or might know it as something else, but what is Chinese whispers?

Take all the students from the end of the row outside. Give them a sentence and have them whisper it to the student sitting next to them. They continue this in sequence until it reaches the other end. The last person writes it on the board

[little sage]

I play "Chinese Whispers" (aka The Telephone Game) a little differently.

Since my classes are usually 12-15 students sitting in a circle around a desk with me at the head, I break them into 2 teams by pointing straight in front of me. The two students flanking me get to see a vocabulary card from what we've studied. On the count of 3 they begin to whisper it down the line of their team.

When the last person on their team has heard it, they stand up, but don't speak. When both teams are ready, I let the team that finished first try to say the word. Basically, their speed won them priority. If they are correct they get a point.

If the first team is wrong, play moves over to team 2. They get a point if they're right, but if not play passes back to team 1, next person in line. Back and forth until somebody gets it right. If nobody does, I've got a problem

* The "we have more students on our team, cry cry cry" issue that sometimes occurs is easily solved: make the team with more students start first.

[Happy Camper]

I would play Go Fish. It gets students reading, listening and speaking and it's completely engaging. Plus, it takes a long time per game

[donpaulo]

Hello and this is a great thread.

I use an alphabet memory game which can sometimes be fun.

first target a verb such as Like or Want

student 1 says "I like (word starting with A)"

student 2 says "I like (student 1's A word) and (word starting with B)

student 3 says "I like (A) (B) and C word

...........

at the risk of redundancy

student 1 says "I like apples"

student 2 says "I like apples and bears"

student 3 says "I like apples, bears and cats"

...........
as you progress farther into the alphabet it gets tough.

with the right group this is a great 5-10 minute activity

[vanilla]

You guys rock! I am not really a game person and I teach H.S. classes of 20 on a 25 handout a year curriculum. It can be really challenging to hold their interest in target language activities.

[jenniferp]

Hi everyone,
I'm new here and have to say this site is great.
A game I used to play in Korea with my young learners was something we called "The Flyswatter game". It can get get quite frantic but we always had a lot of fun with it.
You need a whiteboard and a couple of flyswatters. Divide the class into two teams and draw a grid on the board and then fill in the squares with whatever vocab you have been learning.
Gather the two teams at the other end of the classroom, choose who is going first from each team; they need the flyswatter.
You then call out one word and those two students charge to the board and attempt to "swat" the right square. The other team members can help out if necessary by shouting out "up", "down" etc or by spelling the word. It was very helpful for new readers.
I also varied it by giving them the word in their language and they searched for the English.

xx

[Eric]

welcome to the site, jenniferp!

i've heard of this game but never played it as i never knew exactly how... thanks!

eric

[mtuttle]

[quote=mesmark]If you could only play one game in your English classes from here on out, what would it be? and why should the rest of us choose that game?

I found that for teaching the sight words, the memory game works the best. The students love gathering around the table and trying to match two words from a series of overturned cards. It's the quickest way to get them to memorize the words as far as interactive games, that I've found.

[michèle 2]

We have a game in France called " Petit Bac" We do it in English. You draw a chart with different topics ie: names, countries, animals, house-furniture, adjectives, verbs clothes ect... you just open a dictionary or pick out a letter in a box with the alphabet and select for example B. the kids have 2 minutes to complete their chart. ( 2 points when they have a word that the other hasn't found or 1 point if they have the same word).
My students love doing this game and ask for it every time.

[mesmark]

michele - Thanks for that! It seems like a great game. I might try it out this week with some of my JHS students.

[simplyesl]

My 9-12 classes call for this game every week without fail; thankfully it's my fav, too.

I can't take create for this game; I picked it up from another teacher.

This game is called "legz" or "the feet/foot game".
It works best with even numbers and at least 8 sts.
You have two teams sitting on the floor, facing each other with their legs in front of them (The 1's are team one and the two's are team 2):

1-1-1-1
2-2-2-2

Each pair is a different vocab. >>

1-2-3-4
1-2-3-4

The 1's are on opposite teams but have the same vocab. etc.

Let's say we're doing "What's your fav. sport?", the 1's are "basketball".

The sts ask the question and the teacher (or another st) answers with one of the vocab.

sts: What's you favourite sport?
T: My favourite sport is basketball.

Now, the 1's get up, run through the middle and around the outside. The first st to sit down is the winner. Here's is a high quality graphic explanation (the 's' is where they start):
\/<<<<<<<
\/1-2-3-4 ^
S >>>>>^

S>>>>>\/
^1-2-3-4\/
^<<<<<<<

Have fun!

[Mr. E English]

Hi Mesmark,

Just one game from here on out you ask! Well for me that would have to be '20 questions'.

Of course, there's nothing new or difficult about '20 questions' - it's a real old ESL classic, but I love it because it's so easily adapted to any target language, it provides great speaking practice, set up is so straightforward and it can be used in any variety of classroom interaction - pairs / small groups / whole class.

So, the basic idea - student A thinks of a word. Student B questions student A using closed questions only. Student A can only answer 'yes' or 'no'. There is a limit of just 20 questions and when these are used up the students must guess the original word - or they can guess before using all the 20 questions if they think they know it.

For example -

Let's say you've been teaching nouns of basic household objects - chair, vase, lamp, television etc. Student A chooses one of these (and keeps it a secret of course). Student B questions -

"Is it electrical?" - No
"Is it found in the living room?" - Yes
"Is it made of wood?" - No
"is it soft?" - Yes
"Do people sit on it?" - Yes
"Is it a sofa?" - Yes

Or you've been teaching verbs for hobbies and leisure activities - swim, play golf, watch TV, go shopping -

"Do you do this inside?" - No
"Do you do this alone?" - No
"Do you use any special equipment to do this?" - Yes
"Do you need a ball to do this?" - Yes
"Is it soccer?" - No
"Is it tennis?" - Yes

This can also be adapted to practice grammatical tenses as well as vocabulary, for example the Past Simple -

"Did you do this inside?" - No
"Did you do this alone?" - No
"Did you use any special equipment to do this?" - Yes
"Did you need a ball to do this?" - Yes
"Was it soccer?" - No
"Was it tennis?" - Yes


Anyway, just one game but highly adaptable!