Job Discussion Forums

[Craig!]

www.jeopardy.com has a fun, interactive game. I used it for my intermediate/advanced students in middle school, mainly as an intro to my lesson, my game.
Jeopardy is of course too advanced for students, so i made my own game....
i made large cards with answers on one side/ questions on the other, color coded (easy/medium-, difficult), and using the words/phrases in their book. and i awarded play money to the winning team.

In our "Go For It!" textbook, unit 11 is "What do you think of game shows", so Jeopardy was very appro. Very useful for a late-in-the-term review of what they've learned. And it makes them compose grammatically correct questions in their answers. And a whole lotta fun!

Has anyone made a "Wheel of Fortune "game?

[Malsol]

Sometimes I will give my students the answer on the final exam and have them properly phrase the cortrect question.

[kev7161]

Wheel of Fortune is basically hangman, but hangman can be so plain and uninspiring. However, to make the "wheel" could be somewhat daunting. I suppose you could make or buy spinners and have enough for every 3 or 4 students in your class and that could do the trick. What do you do about prizes? Or do you even have prizes (it's always MUCH more competitive if there is a prize to be won!)?

[Sinko]

My "Wheel of Fortune" is immensely popular and never, ever fails. It can appeal to all ages. You can use your own variations but the one I use is quite universal. Just use a dice. Split into 3 - 6 groups (depending on size of class). Write your phrase on the board and start off with the first person. If the letter is there, write it in and go to the next person in the group to make sure everyone has a turn.
Write this somewhere on the board: 1 = miss a turn, 2 = Y200, 3 = try again, 4 = Y400, 5 = bankrupt, 6 = Y800. For the second round, double the money. For the 3rd round, double again. They go berserk when someone rolls a bankrupt. I make it consonants only, no vowels. For the older students, maybe, they can buy vowels. Solve the phrase and bank the money. You don't need prizes because the kids get an enormous kick out of winning. Caution! This can get noisy. Cries of "Wu! Wu! Wu!' are common.
It's a great game and I'd be interested to hear from anyone else trying it.

[kev7161]

I'll try it this summer at camp Sinko - - great idea. I'll get back to you in September.

[Girl Scout]

I've played a version of "Hollywood Squares/Tic-Tac-Toe". It teaches the students to be creative and/or lie convincingl. It's mainly for upper-intermediate or advanced classes. I find that lower level are not creative enough to be convincing.

On slips of paper I write questions, idioms, or random words from the dictionary. Two people are the contestants. They come to the front of the room. You can pair up the remaining class members or if the class is small they can work alone. Draw a tic-tac-toe board on the whiteboard and the numbers 1 thru 9 in the boxes. Assign each student or pair a number. The contestant choses a number then draws a question and reads it aloud. The class member who was assigned that number either has to answer the question or make up a lie. The contestant decides if the answer was correct or not. If the contestant is right you put an "x" or an "o" in the box. If the contestant is wrong, put nothing in the box. The teachers explains the correct answer if the one given is not correct.

[andrew_gz]

I play this "Wheel of Fortune game.
My dice is slightly different.
1=100 2=lose a turn 3=bankrupt 4=400 5=steal 6=600
You are right, they go bananas when a team gets a three. (Make sure they are shouting the numbers in English)
With the addition of "steal" (take another team's money) it gives them another reason to go berserk.
This game never fails.
It has been worth thousands and thousands of RMB to me.

[Calories]

i played "wheel of fortune" but with cards in a bag. unless someone else took the time to make up questions and write them out, there is no way i'd ever play jeopardy in class.

[kev7161]

[Craig!]

thank you, Andrew, Girl Scout, Sinko and Kev, for sharing your ideas on these games. good stuff.

[amandabarrick]

I have played jeopardy a few times with different topics: The Olympics, review, etc...

It doesn't take that long to write out 25 questions. (5 categories of 5 each) About as long as it takes to prepare most of my lessons.

It is more difficult with big class sizes as three groups of 20 doesn't allow for everyone to participate. But it is still fun. I also play 10 questions, pictionary, charades, hangman, etc... Because students have to choose the block for each question, Tic-Tac-Toe is also useful for teaching location (middle-left, bottom-right, etc...) A useful game that students like is when I have one student try to describe something we have learned before to the class (verbs or nouns), but they can't say the word or 2 or 3 clue words, it get's them talking and improves ability to describe things, using adjectives, and really improves listening. I don't remember the game show that does it, Pyramid or something.

I haven't played wheel of fortune yet.

--AB

[kev7161]

Yeah, the "Pyramid" game is what you are thinking of I think. That would also be fun to set up and play - - I might try THAT this summer as well.

"Taboo" is sort of like "Pyramid" where you have a word and then a list of five common descriptive words below that they CAN'T use to get their team to guess the word. However, in Chinese classes you may REALLY have to work at simplifying it - - maybe only 3 common words are "taboo" instead of five.