Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Fishead soup]

Whenever I met these EPIK or GEPIK teachers I always notice how much they all love to play Jeopardy with their students. They talk about it like its one of the greatest teaching methods on the planet and we should all throw away our textbooks and create an entire coarse based of the T.V game show Jeopardy.

I've tried this numerous times. Only to find everytime I try to adopt this activity the results are the same, regardless of how much time I invested into planning the activity. A small amount of students are very active while the rest of the class are sitting idle. Evey class has at least 5 or 6 students who are really bright. The rest are just wall flowers. Activities like this just make this situation worse. Most of the answers come in one word answers. That's not a lot of English spoken. Also what are the rest of the students doing when the few brilliant students are answering all the questions. Either sitting idle , sleeping, throwing things, or doing homework
for other classes.

Certainly you can dress it up. You can add power point. Supervisors get very impressed when they watch a well staged version of Jeopardy during the open lesson.

I blame the popularity of this kind of activity on the dancing monkey syndrome. How can you properly teach when the students expect you to entertain.

However I wouldn't blame someone for playing this once a semester.
But once a month is just killing time.

[xCustomx]

I've only used this game for my demo classes. I can't imagine how it would actually work in a normal class. With my demo class I designed the game so that the students have to make sentences using the grammar or expressions that they learned. They write their answers down on a white board and take turns writing the answers. Though the class can get out of control at times, they are generally well behaved and almost everyone participates. Once a month is too often however. I play jeopardy, show a movie and listen to a song once per semester. I don't understand how some teachers show movies or cover songs at least once a month

[aarontendo]

I love to use Jeopardy as a nice little review for their midterms/finals. So, twice a year to me. I've noticed that there are students who don't participate, but fortunately not to the extend you've said. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it won't happen this year heh.

I try to spice mine up a little bit, make some double points, bombs, steal points from other teams, that sorta thing. It gets all the students active, if nothing else then they yell and scream at the teammate who chose the wrong card!

As long as I can get students doing anything in my classes in English I'm pretty happy. Hell I let em gossip to each other if it's in English (never happens that way though =(

[nobbyken]

I never liked the jeopardy stuff, probably cause I never seen the TV show.

The battlehsip games are really good for getting students in pairs and practicing the target language. There is also an ppt to demonstrate to kids how to play.

Try http://www.esnips.com/user/gepikteacher

Lots of pther interesting stuff, for pair work or the big screen.
Ours love it and co-teacher is well impressed.

[Scouse Mouse]

It can be a great way to review vocab from a number of subjects, especially with low level students. It is awesome for my 1st grade Middle school kids, but not much use for the older ones. I guess it all depends on the classroom scenario - I doubt there is any activity that is suitable for every student in Korea!

[Binch Lover]

As other posters have said, I use it for review, at most twice a semester. My class is set up in teams of 4. I am pretty strict with the answers; they have to be in a proper sentence or else they lose the points. The way it works is that teams discuss the answer and then the whole team raise their hand when they can all give the answer together. If one student doesn't speak, I give them another chance to say it together. If they get it wrong or different team members give different answers, it's a wrong answer. That way it's not too hectic because they have to practice the answer first.

It's a good activity for what I use it for, but I wouldn't abuse it. Variety is the spice of life.

[KYC]

It didn't work well with my older students. However, I tampered with it and added some variations and it worked great with my younger kids (1-3 graders).

I create a PPT of all the targeted vocabs we've learned from the past 3 or 4 lessons (about 30-40 slides). Split them into two teams and draw two circles and a stick on the board (like a lollipop). Show the PPT and line the kids up in rows. The kids in first position will raise their hands if they know the answer. The kid that gets it right will get to roll a dice. (1-eye, 2=nose, etc). They will get to draw the completed person (lollipop). First team to draw 2 eyes, 1 nose, 2 ears, 1 mouth, 2 arms, and 2 legs win.

I think kids love it so much because they can draw crazy things on the board. I've had drawings of ppl with donkey ears, pig nose, etc. I've played this once with each class (1,2,3,& 4th grade) and they all begged to play it again in the next class. I always refused because I also dont like playing the same games over and over again.

[SuperHero]

Jeopardy is my final lesson every semester. it's a fun game. I use powerpoint and embed 30 second clips from movie trailers and music videos and include some wonky trivia stuff. it's a lot of fun and the class gets really pumped.

I wouldn't use it more than once in a semester and I think it works best as the final lesson and not used for review, just something to let loose with.