when some students are the loser of the game, they are sad.

[daisy deng]

Dear all:

I have been teaching the 6-9 children for 3 years, but I still have a problem like this:

My students like the competetive games very much. So I use many different competetive games. We know, in this kind of games, it is definite that one team will be the winner, and one team will be the loser. So problems come out: When they lose the game, some children will be very unhappy, despite they like this kind of game. I tried many ways to prevent the losers from becoming sad, but they doesn't help everytime. How can I do?

[Senorita Daniels]

You can choose the groups. Make sure that there are some students with strong language skills on each team. Then they will be even, and hopefully they will start to enjoy the games again. You should also teach them good sportsmanship during the activities. Maybe some of the hurt feelings is because of the winning students rubbing it in their faces.

[Sally Olsen]

You can play co-operative games where the challenge is something outside - they play together not against each other for a larger goal. There is quite a bit of writing on this and how to do it. You can play against time or for a score that includes all teams and tries to increase over the lessons. There are board games and games manual from many companies. I like the one in Perth, Ontario. I think we talked about this once and will try and look up the thread but Google Co-operative Games and you will come up with a lot of hits. You can change any game to be co-operative. For instance, baseball. You have one team on the field and the same number up to bat. As the people bat and run and get home, they go out in the field and take up an additional position. If the person is out, they go out in the field and take up an additional position - usually between the bases or in the outfield. This makes it very hard for the remaining batters to get very far and the game goes really quickly at the end when most kids are getting bored anyway and want a change.
Terry Orlick wrote two books on Co-operative Games and Jim and Ruth Deacove of Family Pastimes in Perth, Ontario, Canada have created many manuals for games and board games. Chris Hunt has adapted these ideas to ESL/EFL games and has a newsletter. He is speaking at the JALT conference from the 2nd to the 5th of November if you can catch him. www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/1979/games.html if you can't or http://www.wisehat.com/ and find the Games section.

[kisi]

Hi Daisy,
You just mentioned the idea of competitive games for kids and I used to have a similar problem. But no more. Games that are competitive can be a little tricky. Competitive games can have a very counter-positive effect if badly planned and not well-controlled. Children are very sensitive to things like losing and injustice. If you teach in places like China, this is even more evident. In China, kids won't even want to do the next activity if they loose a game.This problem is rooted in the culture where losing a game means losing face. It is an open secret that Asians hate to loose face. Here are some games I use in my kids classes that work well. Some are games with competition. http://www.english-4kids.com/games.html
I disagree with some scholars who say competitive games should be left out of children's classes. They cannot be left out of the classroom. If well controlled, they bring great results. Generally how you plan your competitive games can be the result of the failure or success.
Most of often I try to find ways to even out the scores in competitive games in ways that are not unfair to the stronger team. Most often competitive games go wrong from the start. When you play competitive games it is important that one team is not much stronger than the other. You must know your students and what they are capable of doing.
There are several ways of adding points to another team which might not seem unfair to the winning team. For example a team can win extra points for good conduct and that brings them up.
Also it is my experience that when a team looses by a narrow margin it is not too bad. Sometimes a narrow margin loss can be great because in the next class you find ways to make them win. If you need some great ideas for your kids classes check out my kids website http://www.english-4kids.com/index.html Another idea is to have a number of games for the class. Sometimes you know that one team can be good in one kind of game. I sometimes have more than one competitive game and make it impossible for one team to win both games. that way the kids are always happy and they know they are at least good at something.
Visit my website for more games and ideas for teaching kids. http://www.english-4kids.com/games.html

[David-sensei]

One method I like is the "credit" method. In small classes, points acquired in the game can be used as credits to "purchase" items like stickers. Winning the game can get more credits, but there's still something to be gained by playing, even if you don't win.


In large classes, with two large teams competing against each other, you can make the allotted points be equivalent to "penalties" for the other team. If Team A beats Team B by a score of 5 to 3, Team B has to do 5 jumping jacks. However, since Team B acquired 3 points in the game, Team A does 3 jumping jacks (replace the jumping jacks with whatever "penalty" you like). You can also opt to have the losing team only do the difference between the scores. In this example, Team B only has to do 2 jumping jacks because they were able to cancel out more jumping jacks by the points they acquired.

This method helps morale because even if a team "loses" they can still succeed in making the other team do a bit of the same penalty they are subject to, or at the very least, lighten their own sentence through their own accomplishments.