Job Discussion Forums

[DirtGuy]

I like to use games in the class and I'm wondering if I should do the same in China. Here is a list of what I currently use or have used:

Outburst
Apples To Apples
A To A Junior
Mind Trap
Quiddler
Bananagrams
Would You Rather
You Gotta Be Kidding
25 Words or Less
In a Pickle
Blurt
Origens
Cathy's Cards

I only teach adults and I can structure the games for different levels.

Does anyone else use these in China for adults, uni students, or kids? If so, what has your experience been?

Most of the games rely on playing cards and these can be digitized vs. bringing over the entire bulky game.

Thanks.

Dirt Guy

[roadwalker]

Chinese uni students love games. I've never used those listed but the names of some of them suggest that they would be good conversation starters. Anything that gets the students excited but still focused would be good, imo. When I've found that I had under estimated the lesson length, I've played 20 questions and similar ("Is it bigger than my desk?" etc.)

I've found some games in the stuff for teachers/idea cookbook section on Dave's. Most of them are not appropriate for uni students but one game really went well whenever I used it: alibi. It takes half or the whole class period, however. You divide the class into groups of 20 or 12, whichever divides better. Divide the 20 into 5 groups of 4 or the 12 into 4 groups of 3. One of the subgroups is accused of a funny or serious crime at a specified time and place, and leave the room to agree on an alibi. The other groups each take turns interrogating one suspect at a time for a couple of minutes. Then you rotate the suspects until each group has interviewed all suspects in their overall group. The interrogators (police detectives) try to trip up the suspects on details. At the end, each detective group reports on who they believe is the killer, whether one suspect or some or all of them. No "winner" but they get really excited about the reports.

[GeminiTiger]

Anyone care to share the working premise of some of your favorite games?

[7969]

I've used this game way back in the past and it can be fun, but the game can get loud and it really only works with smaller groups that you can manage easily. It can be a good warm up.

Hot Seat - How it Works

1. Students form two teams. One player from each team sits at the front of the class with their back to the blackboard, facing their group. These players are in the �hot seat.�

2. The teacher writes a word on the board, the players in the �hot seat� cannot look at that word. Once we begin, the members of each team try to get their hot seat player to say the word, but the team members cannot say the word, or say any part of the word.

3. If the word is 'library', players could say �We go there to get books� or ask questions such as �Where do students spend a lot of their time?' The team whose member first says the target word wins a point.

4. Teams change the �hot seat� players. After writing the second word on the board, we go again. The game continues until all the words have been used. The first team to reach five points wins the game.

[it'snotmyfault]

For an icebreaker I get all the students to make a big circle with their chairs.

Then write on the board;

Change seats if you;
have long hair
are wearing jeans etc

I stand in the middle and say; eg Change seats if you are wearing glasses and quickly sit down while they run around changing seats.

There is always one person left in the middle and they have to introduce themselves/ say what they did on their holidays/ anything you want.

They then say; change seats if you have...

[roadwalker]

[choudoufu]

you can adapt many of the popular TV game shows.

a 2- or 3-minute clip from youtube helps explain the rules.

[7969]

Have you tried the "Activities and Games" branch of the Teachers Forum?

Teacher Forums

You can read but to post, for some mysterious reason, you need yet another user name and login. If you do visit that forum you'll get kicked out of this one and have to log in here again when you return.

[chinatimes]

[crag]

[choudoufu]

[roadwalker]

chinatimes, that's a long response! As for the game, the students catch on pretty quickly, since it is based on cliche movie and television scenes. It's really not difficult, once you get started the first time. Important for the first time to pre-teach some crime vocabulary, especially the name of the game itself: alibi. I find that the students continue to speak, especially the detectives when they think the have found an inconsistency in the suspects' stories. I have to yell "switch" or whatever to move the suspects along to the next station, else they would be there forever. Here is one of the several, I think, explanations in the "Idea Cookbook" section of games: http://www.eslcafe.com/idea/index.cgi?display:927874509-10974.txt

As for getting them to talk in general, every class can be a little different and students will respond to different teachers differently. But it seems that you are giving them responses to copy instead of eliciting (hey, my TEFL course really paid off!) an answer from them. If they just say "book" for example, to a question about their weekend activities, you could try giving them a silent, quizzical look, or the same look while repeating book in the tone of a question. They'll possibly just spell the word book after repeating it, as opposed to giving you the longer answer, "I read a book." Alternatively, you could ask the wrong follow-up question: "You booked a flight to London?" "You booked a hotel room in Shanghai?" etc. Also you could just state: "I need a full sentence!"

In general, I'd ask more questions and give fewer pat answers. Some students will rarely respond and some lessons work here but not there. Try to build some momentum with the students who respond and try to work in the quieter ones.

[chinatimes]

roadwalker,

Whenever I take someone else's idea, I can never execute it because I don't fully understand the point of it. I create "activities" and I start simple, and then I build.

Is there a way I can do this game with maybe just 2 suspects and let the rest of the class be the "jury"? Let each suspect "phone a friend" in case they can't answer. This way there are 4 people. I am not clear on what the 4 suspects would do outside the classroom, and they would have no clue either.

[roadwalker]

I've only done this activity a few times (but repeated the lesson to several different classes each time) and only to freshmen and sophomores. I don't see where juniors and seniors wouldn't enjoy it, though, having taught both at different times. I have never noticed a "we're too mature for that nonsense" attitude in China.

I'm not sure how your variations would work, but it's worth a try. The way I've done it, and it seems that was the original design, is to give a brief description of some crime that happened: "Saturday morning a primary school student complained to the police that her bicycle was stolen from the sidewalk near the McDonald's down town. Some witnesses pointed to the students in this suspect group (pointing to the group) as acting suspiciously before the bicycle was noticed missing." Then I tell that group that they are all suspected and that the police investigators want to question (interrogate) them about Saturday morning. So that group goes outside to agree on what took place that morning. Five minutes or less later they return to the classroom and are separated so that, if they are four students, they get put into four different detective groups for questioning. Then a minute or two later, they are told to rotate to the next group of detectives. The detectives ask detailed questions of the suspects to try to trip them up.

I've always had room full of excited detectives getting excited in catching the suspects in inconsistencies. And it makes the suspects have to be very clever to answer the questions without going too far. As I originally wrote, it's not really a game to win, although you could add prizes or declare winners, but it is one where the students enjoy speaking and actually get pretty loud. The suspects will never be able to have enough details to have a lock-tight alibi. The detectives enjoy asking questions such as "which bus was that, the number 2 or the number 4? Did you sit in the back or in the front? Which dining hall did you have breakfast at? On the ground floor? Who did you sit next to? Who sat next to Sunny? etc. (teacher is going around correcting English during this time.)

They know it's all fun and games and I've never had any of them insult or bully any student. They really enjoy saying "I think Sunny is guilty because she didn't seem to know what Yoyo ate, while the other suspects said she had won tons. Or "All of them are guilty because they couldn't remember what they did after arriving down town." etc

[it'snotmyfault]

Didn't you watch any cop shows when you were younger?

All the bad guys cover for each other,

Bad guy #1 At 3pm we were all at Mickeys house, watching the footie and drinking beers, Liverpool beat Chelsea 2-0

Bad guy #2 At 3pm we were all at Mickeys house drinking beer and watching Titanic, Mickey cried when the ship went down.

whoops !!