Games are an easy way to bring vibrancy and fun into your classroom. In this blog post we’ll explore the dynamic world of whole class games for languages lessons – an immersive, effective and engaging approach that brings vitality to the language learning experience.
In the ever changing landscape of education, we all know that fostering engagement is the key to unlocking the full potential of language learners. Whole class games with their interactive, social and collaborative nature have proven to be not only a diversion but an important tool for language acquisition and consolidation. I encourage every languages teacher to have a strong repertoire of games that can be played by the whole class. Once you have a number of games ready to go, you will transform your classroom into a vibrant hub of language exploration and growth.
Pac-Man
I’m not entirely sure where I came across this game or who originally shared it with me, but my students LOVE this game and beg for me to let them play it every single lesson without fail. It is a great way to consolidate target vocabulary and script like hiragana or kanji, or get kids speaking the target language. It can be played in many different ways – you can ask a question such as ‘what does x mean in English?’, ‘how do you say x in Japanese?’, you can hold up flashcards or pictures. Depending on their language levels, you can ask your questions completely in your target language and have them listening as well as speaking. The possibilities are vast!
Duration: 5 – 10 minutes
Who?: primary or secondary students
The rules:
- Students stand around the classroom, spread out.
- The teacher (or a student!) asks questions of the class. Students raise their hand to answer.
- If a student gets an answer correct, they can take one giant step towards another student. If they are close enough, they can tap them, then that student is ‘out’.
- If a student answers a question incorrectly, they are not out, they just don’t get another chance to answer that one question.
- If students are getting restless, you can also do ghost rounds. A ghost round is when only the students who are out can answer the question as a way to get back into the game.
Evolution
Anyone who has been to the Japanese Language Teachers’ Association of Victoria’s annual conferences and seen Jan Chalmers speak will probably be familiar with this game. I first learnt this game through her – I’m not sure if it’s an original, but it sure is a classic that my students all love as well. It gets them speaking in Japanese a lot and, I join in and play the game as well as, apart from needing to know language, it also has an element of luck so not just ‘the best’ kids in the class always win!
Duration: 5 – 10 minutes
Who?: primary or secondary students
The rules:
- There are 6 different levels: snake, chameleon, frog, kangaroo, gorilla and ninja. As a class, decide on a hand gesture for each level.
- Hand out a picture card or a word card to students. For example, if my unit is on animals, I may hand out cards with pictures of the animals on them or with the word written in Japanese. Students need to know what is on their card and how to say it.
- Practice as a class asking ‘what is that?’. Students will use this when they are playing the game.
- Everybody starts off as a snake, and walks around the room making that hand gesture to show what level they are on.
- Once you find another snake, chameleon, frog etc, you ask each other what is on the card (‘what is that?’). Once you have exchanged the questions and answers in the target language (e.g. ‘what is that?’ ‘it is a dog’, ‘what is that?’ ‘it is a cat’), students do Rock Paper Scissors. Whoever wins moves up to the next level on the chain (i.e. snake moves to chameleon), whoever loses goes back down a level (snakes stay as snakes). Students swap their cards and move on to find their next partner.
- The aim is to get to ninja. If you are a ninja, you must fight another ninja in order to be the winner!
The Bus Game
Whilst the two previous games were very much individual games, this one is a team game. My students are very competitive when it comes to this game. This game works particularly well for script based languages like Japanese and Chinese. I believe from memory this game was introduced to me by a colleague at my previous school who was a wonderful educator of both primary and secondary students. She was always so enthusiastic and the students would get into this game no matter their age. She even had a song to go with it in Japanese but unfortunately I have forgotten it!
Duration: 10 – 15 minutes
Who?: primary or secondary students – particularly script based languages like Japanese or Chinese
The rules:
- Divide the class into teams of about 5 – 6 students (maybe 2 – 3 teams depending on class size). Have them line up facing towards the whiteboard at the front of your class (all facing forward and sitting down).
- Depending on how many teams there are, get mini whiteboards or pieces of paper and markers and hand them to the kids sitting right at the very end of each row.
- On the big whiteboard at the front, write up some hiragana, kanji or Chinese characters. I normally start with about 8 characters to make it a bit challenging, but maybe with younger year levels start with a smaller amount.
- The child at the very back of the line chooses a character, writes it on their mini white board and places the board behind them so that no other children from their team can see if they accidentally turn around (make sure they know – NO turning around and NO talking).
- the child at the back, with their finger, traces the character they chose onto the back of the child in front of them. Each child then traces it on the back of the person in front of them, thus passing it down the line to the front. If a child wants the tracing repeated, they can show this by gesturing to the kid behind them with their hand.
- Once the child at the front of the line is confident they know what the character is, they can stand up and head to the whiteboard and tap whichever one they believe it to be. We then check with the kid at the back of the line, If they were correct, they get a point. If not, the team doesn’t get a point.
- The child who was at the front of the line, heads to the back and everyone shuffles forward and then we start again with a new front and back student!
- The winning team is the team who finishes with the most points.
Simon Says
In my classroom, this game is known as ‘sensei says’ – of course the name can be adapted into any language! It is a fun way to reinforce commands, actions and verbs with our students in the target language. I often use a combination of ‘look’ (students point to their eyes), ‘listen’ (students cup behind their ears), ‘please sit’, ‘please stand’, ‘turn around’, ‘please be quiet’ (students make a shush sign with their finger against their lips).
Duration: 5 – 10 minutes
Who?: Primary ages students
Rules:
- Whoever ‘sensei’ or ‘Simon’ is (whether it is you the teacher or a particular student), stands at the front of the class facing all students.
- The ‘sensei’ gives an instruction or command starting with ‘sensei says…’. All students must do the action. If one gets it wrong, they have to sit down and are ‘out’ but can become sensei’s helper to make sure that sensei doesn’t miss anyone doing the wrong action.
- If the ‘sensei’ does NOT say ‘sensei says…’ and instead says ‘sit down’ or another command, students do NOT complete the action! Instead they freeze. If a student accidentally does the action, they are out and become another helper.
- The winner is the last student left standing.
Teaching Lingo 