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A game for use in the language classroom

The idea for this game has been supplied by George Tomlinson. He teaches at
Kuso Junior High School in Pusan, Korea. This page has been made using
George's instructions and original text. I have tried it with several classes and it
works really well.

A suggested blackboard layout.

100 200 300 400


Fruit
Weather
Occupations
Body
Etc.

Score
Team A Team B
Introduction:
I currently teach at a Kuso Junior High School in Pusan, Korea for the
government of Korea. I have found one game... that isn't new, but is quite
effective. It needs to be modified. In order to do this you can use a picture
dictionary to get some ideas for interesting categories. I have recreated
Scrabble and a number of
other games, but Jeopardy by far has been the most captivating. Its been such
a hit that I am planning to design an entire curriculum around it. How I plan on
doing that is using it in conjunction with "Word by Word: Picture Dictionary"
textbook and workbook.

How to Play:
Copy the suggested blackboard layout (above) onto the blackboard. Divide the
students into groups of teams. The numbers refer to the difficulty of the
questions ie, 100 is very easy whereas 400 is more difficult.
A team chooses a type of question eg. Body 200. You then ask the question:
It's in the middle of the leg and we all have two of them. Answer knee. You
then put a cross in the "body 200" box so that this question will not be asked
again. The team who gets the right answer can continue to pick the category...
The team with the most points wins...
Notes:
I delegate the task of writing on the blackboard to the classroom president and
the classroom vice president. This allows me the chance to monitor the exercise
and all I have to do is give the category descriptions. As students get better
some of them will even be able to deliver the descriptions of the categories
themselves as the MC of the game. I have tried distributing a version on paper
but I have found that in this case the students are too busy looking at their
paper rather than listening to what I am saying. This detracts from the listening
skills that they can acquire and they don't see the TPR I am performing so that
the meaning of the word gets
permanently recorded into their long term memory bank.

Some Possible Categories:

Places: (Geography)
Places: (Around Town) Bank, Store
School: (Classroom) (Classroom actions) (TPR)
Family: (twins, brother-in-law, great grandmother, nephew, cousin)
Activities: (everyday) work, cook, clean, drive
Weather: drizzling, sleeting, hazy, foggy
Hobbies: painting, sculpting, knitting
Music: tuba, cymbals, reggae, jazz, ska
Occupations: architect, butcher, firefighter
Fruit: mango, cherry, kiwi, persimmon
Vegetables: pepper, cucumber, onion
Body: pinky, thumb, ankle, wrist
Emotions: nervous, hungry, sleepy
Mammals: zebra, hippo, skunk, whale
Birds: duck, peacock, ostrich,penguin

Examples of questions:

Fruit:
I am thinking of a fruit that grows in tropical
regions. It begins with an "M." And is nowadays popular
ingredient in iced tea..... Mango.

I am thinking of a fruit that is famous in New Zealand.


It is small, round and its color is brown. Its
inside color is green and black..... Kiwi

Body:
This is my hand and this is (pointing to it).... wrist
This is my wrist and these are my...... fingers
These are my fingers and this is my.... thumb
This is my thumb and this is my......... pinky

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