Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Bulsajo]

http://www.partyschool.com/drinkinggames/cards/a$$hole.html

http://www.pagat.com/climbing/a$$hole.html

http://www.barstop.com/links/games/a$$hole.html

Click on the links then manually change all the $ to S in the address bar.

[jajdude]

I found a Monopoly game in Suwon (at a Home Plus store) for half the price of the English-only version in Seoul, as it is locally made and has Korean language, which my kids need. They don't learn much beyond numbers but they like it. I was surprised the kids in grade six didn't even know the Korean word for "mortgage" even though it's on the deed cards.

Some good old board games I remember from long ago but have never seen in Korea:

Careers

Masterpiece (good for numbers between 100,000 and 1,000,000)

Had "Clue" once but even the adults with good speaking ability found it too hard to figure out.

Full House

Gambler

Stock Ticker

[kimcheeking]

I just got a copy of Cranium (canadian edition) but haven't had a chance to play it yet.

[riley]

Yeah, it's important to have a good list of games to play.
A$$hole is also known as the "Great Dalmuti" (?), and they have actually made a deck of cards specifically for the game.
Speaking of drinking games (A$$hole), modify the game "I have never", instead of drinking, students give fake money or chips to the speaker for something they have done. It's a great way of reinforcing present perfect, and a lot of fun with both more experienced students and adults.

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

Axis and Allies

[katydid]

if you're game for monopoly the life is good too. it's full title is 'the game of life' and it's by milton bradley. the board is huge. there's a big spinner in the middle. you choose a career , spin, and drive around the board taking on kids, insurance, etc. through 'life'.

We had that game at our hagwan last year, and it was such a **pain** when the kids wanted to play it...it took practically the entire period to set everything up!

I never understood WHY we had Jenga either, though I like the idea of writing topics on the pieces and have the players speak.

[mokpochica]

What about 'Clue'? "It was Coronel Mustard in the Billiard Room with the Lead Pipe!"

I also like 'The Book of Questions'. Although it's not a board game, it's really good for starting class discussions or just for a notebook activity.

Picture Bingo games (at teacher stores) are great as well. You can make your own with clip art from the internet too.

Junior Trivial Pursuit might be o.k., but I would check and see if the questions were too much directed toward North American kids. You could probably use the board/concept and make your own questions about Korean people if need be.

[OiGirl]

Pictionary Jr.
I often pull out the cards that are relevant to the unit we are studying and only use those. You could also make your own cards to tie this came to your curriculum. Kids really love this game and it's surprising who is good at it. I would use the Jr. version with adult language learners as well.

Scattergories Jr.
Again, you could make your own cards. A good game for teaching students to think differently than the group. You need creative, original answers to gert points!

Blab it
Like Scattergories, but uses cards, is smaller, cheaper, more portable.

Upwords
A nice alternative to Scrabble and a much faster game!

Taboo
Another word guessing game, good for vocabulary.

Darts (velcro)
I have a velcro dart board that I bought for 50 cents back home at a second-hand store...it is the most popular game in my classroom. Students throw a ball and then answer a question. If they get the question right...they add the points to their team's score. If they get it wrong ...they subtract it! Of course the questions come from the unit we are studying. This could be done with any targt game...throwing coins into an egg carton, etc.

[Oaklandstroke]

Clue was a great game for me. It helped my students modalize contextually (I think it was Colonel Mustard...) and use prepositions of place ( the landmarks being both literal places and tools that the user has to be in close proximity to in order to accomplish the task). For most of my students, Clue was a motivating communicative way to use English. With lower level students, you have to set it up carefully and make sure they understand what the phrase means and how to say it correctly (including appropriate corrective feedback)

[VanIslander]

[mysteriousdeltarays]

Crazey Cards by far, unavailable here, but sort of stupid and fun and really strange odds to playing it. Kids love love it because of the strange analytical angle of the odds. Also you can't really cheat at it.

You know you can take any deck of flash cards, lets say Let's Go, or even better phonics cards. Buy to decks, shuffle them together and play go fish with them. Just make sure sure the kids say the word. Well they have to in Go Fish don't they?

Make sure that the kids call them flashcard game, never refer to it as a "card game" or they will go home and tell their parents that you are playing "poker."

You can gp through say a book's worth of vocabulary in say Let's Go in a very short period of time, half the book in a month, doing this say ten minutes a day. Then you don't have to "darahaseo" the vocabulary. They already know it. You just focus on the grammar after that.

Let's use Let's go as an example, the reads fly in a balloon. The lesson is past tense flew a balloon. It makes it a lot easier for them.

They are just little kids.

The way I look at it they are my little friends, not Bechtell employees, or dykes or whatever just sort of reverse engineer on them. Monopoly is hard for kids, but if you use the childrens version of Monopoly or Scrabble, don't . Whoever created those things. Kids will go with you as a simplified version of it. You just simplify it yourself. Forget life, Clue, any of them.

The Children's version of Scrabble is the worst. You just play the normal game, keep your vocabulary to zero, you just feed them the answers using simple words. One of the great things abouit Scrabble is... think how easy it would be if you really care who wins to cheat the kids. Tell them anything! Wyherbr is a word.

Spend your own money give the kids say sixteen or even 24 letters at a time, just buy multiple sets, blend the letters together in a couple of bags.
Just give them the answers. Believe me they will after their taxing attempt to come up with a Z word 10 points is a big thing to a child, all they can come up with is Zebra. Believe me they will remember zero or zipper or whatever next time.

The big idea is to reverse engineering, cheat so to speak, let them win.

[Universalis]

[oneiros]

My favourite right now is the "What is it?" game. I bought it at EnglishPlus in Seoul on my last trip to the big city. It's sort of the same concept as Guess Who, but you're guessing about common household objects rather than people. There's also a board, and the square you land on tells you what kind of question you can ask (ie, a time question, a location question, an adjective question, etc.) It works wonders for my middle school students who otherwise refuse to put together a complete sentence on their own.

Since it's board based, you could also make your own "object" cards to teach more vocabulary.

[Dawn]

Not a western board game, but The ZigZag game at English Plus is my students' favorite at the moment. The concept is similar to that of Scattegories, but the topics are more familiar to the kids. Only drawback is that it comes with a limited number of topic cards, but you can easily make new cards to cover topics you want your students to discuss.

Connect Four is another good one. Program the chips with letters or sight words, and make the kids build words or sentences for points. Give more points for longer words or sentences.

Chutes and Ladders is great for building vocabulary and number awareness with the little guys and can also be used with the older ones to work on specific verb forms. (What is he doing? What did she do? What happened? What do you think will happen? etc.)

Up for Grabs (if you can find it anywhere) is a good, simple word building game that the kids never seem to tire of.

Pictionary Jr. (for beginning and intermediate students) or Pictionary (for advanced) is a perennial favorite. It's also easily adaptable for use in larger classes.

Other good ones that you will find at your local teacher's store include ...

Chunks -- Billed as "the incredible word-building game," it's a good way to help students solidify their grasps of consonant sounds, long and short vowel sounds, blends and digraphs.

Word by Word -- Takes standard Reading Rod manipulatives and turns word-building into a game. As a bonus, you can use the Rods included with the game for more traditional word building activities. (My little guys love to play "Take Five," where they reach into a bag, draw out five rods and see if they can create any words.

Crossword Toss -- Roll letter cubes onto a game board, then use them to build words. Each cup on the board has a different value, so kids have to think through which letter combination can earn them the most points. (We play this in teams, and I let the opposing team "steal" the turn if they can think of a word worth more points than the one given by the team that rolled.)

Finally, good eBay finds include ...

Sentence Scrabble -- Produced in the late 70s/early 80s, this version uses word tiles rather than letter tiles, and students must combine words to form grammatically correct sentences. Like Scrabble Jr., it has the pre-written "math it" sentences on one side and blank squares for original creations on the other.

[uberscheisse]

i saw children's pictionary at kyobo in gangnam. 26,000 i think.