WHAT'S YOUR FAVOURITE GAME?

[iann]

My favorite game for the ESL classroom is Word Up
http://www.eslgames.com/wordup/ , the students love me when I bring this in ; )

[neil]

Give every s a piece of paper. Ask a question. Each s writes their answer on the piece of paper. Then every student swaps with a student who is not sitting near them. Ask another question. Every s writes their answer. Swap again. Another question. Another answer. Swap. Question. Answer. Swap. Etc etc. 10 questions is a good number. At the end, there will be ten answers on each piece of paper, written by ten different students. No one knows who wrote which answer.

After swapping one final time, the students have to go around asking the questions of eachother. (The questions can be written on the board for the students to refer to, making sure they use the correct pattern.) The aim is to put a s's name next to each answer on the paper. The first student to do so gets a big wet kiss from the teacher.

Ok, you don't have to do that last bit.

Questions, of course, can be about anything. Egs:

What's your favourite movie?
What did you do yesterday?
What do you do for a living?
What is your opinion of Britain?
What is the meaning of life?

At the end, you can collect the pieces of paper and look at the grammar mistakes, and you may also learn the meaning of life.

[Ryan in China]

Hey Neil,


Thanks so much for this idea! I used it with much success last week. It got them moving around. The only problem with this and all competition-type games is that the students will do anything to win - including speaking in Chinese. I know there are ways of derailing this sort of behaviour but there are bound to be more than a few cheaters in the bunch... but a wonderful game!


Peace,

Ry

[neil]

Hi Ryan

I'm glad to hear you liked this game. Actually I got it from one of my students - she's a teacher herself (Taiwanese). I also had great results with it. I think it's a real gem, but yeah, you've got to really make sure the students don't go around the class showing eachother the pieces of paper and asking, "Did you write this?" Maybe a good way to prevent this is to tell them that if you see any students doing this they must sit down on a chair in the corner for 20 seconds or something like that.

I've just found another game elsewhere on this site. I'll paste it below because I think it might be a good one. I'm going to try it in my next lesson, which begins in 15 mins.... Gotta go.....

**************************************

THis great questioning game is based on the 1960's TV show. First you ask all the students to write down some secret about themselves on a slip of paper--someplace they have visited, hidden talent, secret skill, or unknown accomplishment. It must not be know by anyone in the class. They must write their name on the paper. Read them and pick a good one. Call that student and two others out of the classroom and explain to all three that they are to tell the class that they are the person who the secret is about. They then sit in front of the class while the student question them to determine which two are lying and which on is telling the truth. After 5-10 minutes of questioning, the students vote on who is the real truth teller. You can award points to the students who guess correctly. My 7th and 8th graders love this game-it has an element of mystery develops questioning and thinking skills, and allows the students to learn new things about each other while having a laugh!
Chris Murphy
Yew Chung SIS
China

[Joel]

I found a new site, www.kindersite.org that has loads of fantastic content, games/stories/songs. It's primarily aimed at early learners but the've got language classes from schools all over the world trying out the site from the USA to Lithuania, I even saw one from the Sudan.

The most interesting thing is that the kids/students usage of the site is being used as a research project to understand what is effective or not in Internet content.

The've got loads of PhDs involved and the content is the best i've seen.

[Frances]

By far my favourite game is The Dictionary Game. Working in small groups (4 is ideal) with a dictionary, one person searches through the dictionary for a word they don't know. They read it out, and if all players don't know the word, then play begins:
The person with the dictionary writes the dictionary definition.
Other players invent a definition that they think could apply to the word.
Papers are folded over to hide the writing and the person with the dictionary reads out all of the definitions. After all have been read out, each player (except for the dictionary holder) votes for one of the definitions. Points are awarded (one vote = one point).
The player with the dictionary passes it to the left, and another word is looked for.

Takes a bit longer than 20 minutes though!

[waspy]

I love play game. But each game has effects in many ways. However most people choose game for relax. In my opineon most people like to play GameOnline. because Game Online can play several players.