Keeping YLs on Task – Part Two

Another great guest piece from Leahn Stanhope. She also somehow finds time to regularly update her own blog, so give EarlyEFL a look. If you don’t teach kids, Back Up Plan is a thought provoking post for all of us.  But before you rush off there, here’s her latest piece:

“Who’s who? was a popular children’s game when I was growing up. It was, I think originally a game from MB games but it has been copied and repackaged in various formats over the years. I first used it in an EFL classroom about ten years ago but, it’s not until recently that I’ve realised the full potential of this game.

For those of you who don’t know the game I’ll try and explain it. It’s a game played in two teams. Each team has identical picture cards with a head shot of a person and the person’s name. Each team has to choose a person. That person represents them. The two teams then take it in turns to ask each other questions to find out who they are. It’s a game of elimination. Imagine my first question is Is it a boy?  If the other team answered Yes, it is I would then remove all of the pictures of girls. The teams continue asking questions until they discover the identity of the secret person.

At first glance the game seems quite limited as it can only be used to work on physical descriptions of people’s faces with language such as: Has he got brown hair? , Is he old? , but if we make our own Velcro boards and mini-flashcards there are numerous possibilities.

About a year ago I was teaching a one-to-one class with an eleven year old girl when I looked up and saw two versions of the game on her bookshelf. She had a great Disney version of the game with characters such as Ariel and the Genie from Aladdin. Since then, I have been using this game in class to practice all sorts of language and vocabulary with children. Here is a list of possible topics and structures that can be practised.

Now for a bit of more serious stuff, we talk about giving learners meaningful opportunities to talk right? Well, with adults you can get them role-playing situations that are meaningful to them by that I mean that they are situations that they may encounter i.e. in a restaurant. Finding meaningful activities for children is more complicated, but in my opinion this game is meaningful to YLs because it is a game they would play in their own language.

The game is a great way to get children speaking in a structured and scaffolded way. You can supply stem sentences or frames for weaker children to follow and stronger students can participate without that support. It’s rich in language and vocabulary and is great for developing listening, speaking and turn taking skills.

Teacher led alternative

I love this game because it’s so versatile. Imagine this situation. You want to practice listening as a disintegrated skill. What I mean by that is instead of in the first version where you have integrated skills work (listening and speaking) here you want to focus on listening only. So, the teacher leads the game. The teacher gives every child in the group a number and then reads descriptions of animals. For example:

T: Number one .It’s got a long neck. It lives in Africa. It’s brown and yellow.

Now, in this activity the child doesn’t reply orally but simply takes the animal off of the board and then it’s the next child’s turn. The child responds not in words but in action (taking the giraffe card off the board) to show comprehension.

Materials needed

• You will need the sides of two big cardboard boxes to make your Velcro boards.
• Paper to cover you boards
• Velcro
• Mini-flashcards (you can find images on the internet, but make sure they are legally copied!)

I hope this idea gives you and your children hours of fun!”

Sure it will!

Any other variations on this game, similar games that keep YLs on task or volunteers to do a guest piece? Comments below please:

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 at 6:10 am and is filed under Classroom management, Teaching young learners, TEFL, TEFL blogs, TEFL games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.