In the beginning....there was a B
This is great fun. Divide the class into teams, and have one team draw a letter card out of a hat - all the teams now have three minutes to think of as many words as possible starting with that letter, which they write down on paper you hand out.
When the three minutes is up you give them a further two minutes to write all their words in their column on the board (be strict with this time limit). You then go through and cross out all the words that are spelt wrong, etc, before totting up the number for each team. You can usually play four or five rounds in an hour's lesson.
Dictionary Race
This is basically just a spelling test, but made into a game the students loved it. First divide the class into teams, and hand out a set of English-Japanese dictionaries (the dictionaries do not all have to be identical, though obviously they all need to contain the words you are using). Then write a list of ten random but rather difficult words on the board. The students have to race to find the meanings in their dictionaries - once they find one, they can run up to the board and write it next to the English. One point for each definition a team writes up.
For round two, give the students three minutes to commit the whole list to memory. Then scrub it off the board, and in their teams the students try to write the whole list on the sheet you give them. The first team to bring you a completely correct list gets five points, the second team four points, etc. Any team caught cheating (e.g. writing the list on their desks before you scrub it off) gets docked twenty points or so for the first offence in a rapidly escalating inflationary spiral. This game promotes quite a lot of cooperation within the team, and encourages all members to participate, since the most effective strategy is for each member to commit just a couple of words to memory.
The Truth Machine
What with bullying being such an issue in Japanese schools nowadays, I thought it would be appropriate to teach my kids how to insult each other in English. This lesson really taps into your students' natural propensity to be viciously cruel to one another, and every class I have ever done this with has loved it. There isn't a great deal of English in here (especially since half my students simply wrote their insults in Japanese) but there is a bit, and it is fun. The lesson plan went like this:
1.At the start of the lesson, whip out an example truth machine (that you made earlier) and point it in the face of a carefully selected student.
2.Say "Pick a colour" your victim will do so eventually, and when he does, you open and close your fingers while saying G-R-E-E-N.
3.G-R-E-E-N finishes with the truth machine open to show the numbers. Say "Pick a number," make him say his number in English, and do more of the finger thing.
4.After doing the number thing twice, do it once more, only this time don't do the finger thing, just open the flap and read what is written underneath. Hopefully it will say "You're CRAZY!!!" and all the other students will laugh cruelly at the victim. (Some of the other insults take a little longer for everyone to get the point, but you'll get that spiteful laugh going eventually. They especially liked "You eat poo!" once I told them what "poo" is).
5.Repeat with several more students, to get some more laughs. Then, once they've got the idea, hand out the instruction sheet and some plain paper and let them get on with it.
Like I say, there is not a great deal of English in this one. On the other hand some of them get VERY creative with making up new insults, particularly the boys who already know some naughty words in English: "サイモン、アースホールってどんなして書くの？マスターベーションは？" So gratifying to see their little minds at work.
If the "insults" theme sounds a bit much, a tamer but still entertaining version of this game is to use it to practice the future tense, with the students writing sentences such as "You will win the lottery." With a lighthearted approach, however, the insults version will really grab the attention of those students whose cooperation might not otherwise be forthcoming.
Download the photocopiable print here(right click>save target as).
Consequences
This is a game I remember from my own schooldays, and it was easy to adapt it for an English lesson.
Divide the class up into groups, and give each group a blank piece of paper. Ask them "Who is he?" Once they have figured out what that means, have them write a name at the top of the paper (tell them that ANYONE is okay) and fold the paper so that the name they have written is covered. When every group has done this, they all pass their paper to the next group (going clockwise). Now ask them, "Who is she?" again they write a name down, fold to hide it, and when all the groups are ready, they pass the papers clockwise again. Keep doing this until they have written down something for each of these six questions:
- Who is he?
- Who is she?
- They went on a date. Where did they go?
- What did he say?
- What did she say?
- What happened in the end?
(To make things easier, write each question up on the board as you go, but only AFTER you have asked it orally - this will give the students some listening practice, and some thinking practice).
Once they are all done with number 6, you gather all the papers to the front and read out the stories. Alternatively you could have the students read out the stories, but in my experience this will get painful very quickly (though very confident classes may manage). Since no one knew what was written for the above questions when they wrote their own answers, some really hilarious stories will come out.
