Games

1. The split second answer

   The group stands in a circle, the group leader stands in the middle as the quiz master. The question must be answered within 2 seconds. The game can also be played with two teams. There are points for correctly answered questions. There are no points if the answer is correct but came too late. There are minus points for those who stammer and stutter and if the answer does not come “like a pistol shot”.

   Possible questions:

• Who is the foreign minister at the moment?
  
• How many toes do you have?
• How old are you?
• What is your name?
• Which direction is south?
• What is the root of 49?
• What is 7+7?
• What month is it?
• Which day of the week will it be in 3 days?
• What was the name of the first president of the USA?
• Which letter comes after W?
• Which letter comes before K?
• What is your father’s name?
• Which day comes before Thursday?
• How many people are in the room?
• How many doors are in the group room?
• Where did you take your last vacation?
• How old will you be in 12 years?
• What size feet do you have?
• What is heavier? A kilo of iron or a kilo of feathers?

2. Vocabulary Mimes

 Students can play this game either individually or in groups. Designate one student the vocabulary mime for the first round. Give the mime a card with the definition of the vocabulary word on it and have her mime the definition while the rest of the class attempts to answer it using a vocabulary word from your current lesson. To keep students from simply shouting out the list of vocabulary words, have them wait until the mime has finished and give them one or two guesses to get the answer right. The student who guesses correctly becomes the next mime. 

3. Last Man Standing

 Have all students stand and face the front of the classroom. If a child is unable to stand, have him raise his hand to represent his participation. The teacher walks around the classroom and selects a student.  She asks her a question about a vocabulary word: such as say the word and ask for its definition, form an incomplete sentence and ask for the missing word or create a situation that fits the meaning of the word. If she answers correctly, she remains standing. If she answers incorrectly, she must sit. The winner is the last person standing in the room.

4. Hangman

· Play this two-player game to help children sharpen their spelling and word-decoding skills.

·  Start the game by having one person choose a word or phrase that the other player knows how to spell.

      ·    Place one dash on the bottom of a piece of paper for each letter of the word or words chosen. Leave a space between words.

·    Draw a "gallows" at the top of the paper - draw a horizontal line at the bottom, a vertical line coming up out of its center, and then a short line off to the right at the top (so that you now have an upside-down "L" on the horizontal line). Draw a short vertical line off the end of the top line - this is your "noose."

·    Have the other player guess one letter at a time - or he or she can use a turn to guess the entire word or words.

·      Fill in the letter (everywhere it appears) on the appropriate dash (or dashes) each time the person guesses correctly.

·       Add one body part to the drawing each time the letter chosen is not in the word. Begin by drawing a head attached to the short vertical line (the "noose"). Add eyes, ears, nose, hair, body, legs, and arms. Know that if the drawing of the person is completed before the word or words are guessed, the guessing player loses. If the player figures out the word or words first, he or she wins.

5.  Bingo

·      Create the bingo grid on a piece of 8x10 white paper. It should be five columns wide and five rows high. The center square should be marked “free space” or something similar.

·         Make five different master copies of the vocabulary bingo card. Fill in the remaining spaces with either a vocabulary word or a short definition. Vary the location of the words on each of the five master copies. Make copies of the master bingo cards so you have enough for each student in the class.

·         Pass out a bingo card and markers (candy, beans, confetti) to each student. Instruct the students to mark their “free space” before beginning.

·         Call out a definition for one of the vocabulary words your students have studied. If they recognize the word it defines and have that word on their bingo card, they mark the word. If they do not recognize it, they miss out in winning the game. You can also call out a vocabulary word, and the students will mark the definitions on their cards. When a student gets a row either horizontally, vertically or diagonally, they may say “bingo.”

·         When a student wins, he must tell the teacher each of the words in their row, as well as the definitions that go with them. This gives all the students in the class an oral review of words they may not have on their cards.

·         If preferred, laminate copies of the vocabulary template. You can then let students choose 24 vocabulary words and write them with dry-erase markers in any square they choose. This gives them control over their game. Erase the cards after each game and let students choose a different 24 words and different placements.

Balloon Debate 

Focus: Speaking.

1. Outline of the game: This is a dramatic situation! 8 people are travelling in a hot air balloon. The hot air balloon is losing air very quickly. Everybody is in danger. The pilot says that unless one person jumps out in order to make the balloon lighter, the balloon will crash and everyone will be killed. Each student must take on the identity of a person in the balloon and make a speech. After hearing all the speeches the class decides on who should be the first to jump, then the second, etc. (Or if everyone in the class is playing, the people in the balloon decide.)

2. First, decide on who the people in the balloon are.

3. Each person has five minutes to prepare a short speech (if you wish, you can have a word limit, suggestion: 150 words).

4. Listen to the speeches.

5. Vote!

Word Tennis

Focus: recycling vocabulary and speaking.

1.   Find a partner, and if possible stand a few feet away from one another. You are going to play tennis, but using words instead of a ball, and your voice instead of a racquet! However, you are not playing against your tennis partner; you are playing against the other tennis pairs in the room.

2.   Decide who is going to serve (go first). When the teachers says start, the player going first must shout out a subject word beginning with A, his partner must shout back another word beginning with A. Continue until you can’t think of any more A words, then move onto words beginning with B. The object of the game is to keep playing as long as possible. The winners are the pair of players who are still playing when everyone else has given up/ run out of words!

A bit of winter in summer

            This game is called “snowball”. You are given several words and you are to make out of them word families. This game is possible to play either alone or in couples, even in a small group, “Whose snowball is bigger.” Wins the person who has got more words.

For example:  govern

            Govern

            Government

            Governor

            Governess

            Governing

Find the murderer

1. Write on board: 

Mrs. McDonald was found dead in her house on Tuesday at eight in the morning. You have to find who killed her and why.

2. Explain to students they are going to prepare a play and perform it (split them in 2 or 3 groups) while one group performs the other watches them. The audience has to guess who the murderer is.

3. Preparation: give students enough time to prepare this and help them at this stage, if necessary.

·         Option (a) Tell the students they are free to invent a story about why she is dead, and how; they can choose their own personalities and alibis, and decide who will be the inspector as he or she has to prepare a few questions to ask the suspects. They work in groups and they decide who the murderer is amongst themselves. If you have a class of say 8 or 10, divide them in two groups so that they don't know what the other group is planning.

·         (b) Or you can give them a few suggestions saying she was very rich, or famous, or whatever comes to your mind. Write on the board a few relatives or friends e.g. her niece, her brother-in-law, her sister, husband, neighbor etc. Write on the board some useful questions e.g. "what were you doing at ....? Where were you staying? They prepare the play, but still let them decide who's who.

4. If the audience guesses right give them points or a round of applause.

Doctors and patients

Divide your class in half, half are doctors, half are patients.

·         Put the patients in an area of the class which becomes the waiting room. The patients should either come up with their own symptoms, or you can give them a few ideas - the one who wakes up in the morning feeling sick, the one who can’t sleep or the one who’s putting on a lot of weight or the one who’s losing weight - you can have any kind of ailment you want and the idea is that every patient should visit every doctor and get advice from that doctor.

·         Be careful to set a time limit for each consultation with the doctors. Once the patients have visited each doctor – they may want to make notes of the advice given – they return to the waiting area and decide who the best doctor was, and perhaps who was the craziest! Meanwhile, the doctors all get together, because they are at a medical conference, and they have to compare the advice they’d given – and perhaps decide who the craziest patient was!