Teaching Children - Games and Activities Archive

This edition's panelists are:

Yuco Kikuchi
David Lisgo
Alan Meisch
Carla Wilson

Yuco Kikuchi
Bingo
This is a game I play with children for inputting vocabulary and phonics sounds at the same time. In my lesson I don't have any phonics section. I include phonics sounds when we practice vocabulary.

By playing Bingo game every time I introduce new vocabulary, children can learn initial sounds. After a few months most can guess the right word when they hear the initial sound.

It was possible for many children to read and write CVC (e.g. cat, hat, bat) and then later easy graded readers.

Being able to read and write gives children a lot of confidence and motivate them more than we can imagine. I hope you will enjoy this game with your students.

Level:     Any
Purpose:     Inputting new vocabulary and/or structures in a meaningful and fun way and practicing listening to phonics initial sounds.
Skills:        Listening
Time:        5-10 min.
Age:         5 years old and over
Group Size:    Any
Material:    Nine flash cards, Bingo makers, chips or ohajiki

How to play
Step 1:  Preparation
Draw a grid of 3 by 3 on the board. Have children do the same in their notebooks or provide a sheet of paper.  If your students are young, make the grid small and have them draw pictures in the boxes. If your students can copy words, have the 9 boxes big enough for them to write the words.

Call the word one by one and have children draw or write words in their Bingo grid. Tell children to draw or write in any space they want.  Show an example by filling the grid on the board yourself.

Provide bingo markers saying, "Take seven chips each."  and pass a bag or two filled with bingo markers.

Step 2: Play bingo game
Shuffle the flash cards well and take one card from the top. Call a word as if you are saying phonics sounds. e.g. /d/, /d/, /d/, dog.  /k/, /k/, /k/, cat.

Then after a short pause show the flash card to children to see.  (Never show the card before you call the word. If you show the card too soon, children might not listen to your English and won’t develop their listening skills.) Children put a Bingo marker on the word in their grids.

Continue with the rest of flash cards  in the same manner until you have two cards left.

Step 3:
Ask children how many bingos they have got. Children count and say the number in English. Write the numbers on the board and add up all the numbers together with children. Write the sum.

Step 4:
Repeat this and compare the numbers with the previous round.

Step 5:
For the next lesson, use the same Bingo sheet and play again. You can call the word the same way.  But if your students are ready, you can challenge your students by calling a word in a sentence you want to practice and see whether they can catch the word. e.g. I have a brown dog. or There is a brown dog in the yard.

Step 6:
After enough input, ask children to call the words taking turns. e.g. S1: Cat. S2: Hamster. S3: Dog.

Step 7:
Ask children to call the words as part of a sentence you want to practice. Write the target sentence on the board and practice together substituting the word before you start the game.  e.g. Is there a cat/dog/hamster in the yard?

Variation 1:
Use sixteen flash cards instead of nine.

Variation 2:
Use twelve cards and let your students decide which nine words to write/draw in their Bingo grids.

Variation 3:
Include two or three words in a sentence. e.g. I can see a black dog chasing a white cat in the yard.

Variation 4: Finger Bingo Game
Instead of using seven Bingo markers children use their fingers and point all the words they hear. Be sure that the grids are small enough for children's little hands.

It is hard for some children to put fingers on the words. So it is better to finish one round when someone calls "Bingo!"

Yuco teaches children and adults. She has assisted and collaborated in a distance education program in Chiba and Florida and has presented at Expos and conferences including the first TEFL China International Conferences in 2002. Currently she is giving on-site and on-line workshops. Has opened lab-schools for teacher development opportunities in Chiba and Tokyo. A columnist for a magazine for children's teachers in 2008 and 2009 and has been writing for the "What Can I Do on Monday?" column in Teachers Learning with Children, JALT Teaching Children Special Interest Group newsletter. Has been volunteering at an after-school English program in an elementary school in Chiba City. She is an ETJ Chiba coordinator and has been serving as a reading committee member for JALT.

David Lisgo
Mystery card
"Successfully"?  I seem to have varying degrees of success no matter which activity I use; I've learned that any activity can fall flat, usually due to some missing ingredient.  I use a lot of different activities with my classes, but I do have a number of favourites.  Activities which students enjoy using again and again, activities with many variations that can be used with different age groups, levels and class sizes, activities which take little time to set up.  These are the kinds of activities which are my favourites and today I'd like to tell you about one of them which I use in classes of up to nine children from the ages of 5-12. Let's call the game 'mystery card'.



1.  Mystery card: word building.

Materials: alphabet picture cards and some well-known CVC picture/word cards.
Procedure: scatter a number of your alphabet picture cards face-up on the table or floor, then play a little 'touch and stretch' by calling on individual children to touch single cards and vocalise the words, then ask "Two or three cards?" or “Three or four cards?” etc. to allow the students to decide the length of the chain, whilst indicating the meaning of your question with your fingers.  Then link a number of cards together to form a chain. Obviously the longer the chain the more challenging the task, so care should be taken not to make the task too difficult.  Let's choose the words "book, elephant, dog". Now hide the corresponding CVC picture (in this case, bed) behind a large question mark card and have the next child pick up the three cards and place them in a row on the board. Now try and elicit the dialogue:


"I know!"  

"What is it?"

"It's a bed."



If no one knows, then I don't know either, so I'll take a look and see that the mystery card is a picture of a "bed".  We can try again, someone has probably figured it out by now but if not, then Fred, my very large hippopotamus puppet will help us out.



At this stage most of the children won't have a clue as to what is going on, but don't explain just let them work it out in their heads.  Before long it will be a simple task and it's a great skill for them to learn.  Do a few cards this way, then give oral clues only for other cards, for example "apple, nut, tiger" (ant) or "book, umbrella, gorilla" (bug). This greatly simplifies the activity, speeds the process up and allows you to go for longer and more complex words.  I always use the same cards/words when giving clues as they act as a mnemonic for the children.



2.  Mystery card: vocabulary building.
Materials: a number of picture/word cards (preferably picture one side, word the other) both known and unknown, including today's target vocabulary.  All the words must be within the reading abilities of the children.

Procedure: start of by sorting the cards into 'known' and 'unknown' piles.  I like to do this quickly and with fun, so I often play the game "Speed of Light", which goes like this.  I hold a card in front of me and try to cover the picture with both hands before the children can see what it is. To be successful you have to move at the speed of light.  Children stand and shout out each known word and when they are unable to identify a picture, then it goes into a separate pile to be used in the following activity.  I usually select the vocabulary phonetically, choosing up to one card for each student and one for myself. 
 
One student volunteers her name and then I shuffle the cards (the students cannot see them) and she stops me.  I hide this card behind the question mark card and then write a personalized, humourous (to my mind) sentence, which includes the 'mystery' word on the board for her and the other students to read, after the sentence has been read, then the card is given to the student.  Let's say that the target sound is /oa/ as in 'boat' and /ow/ as in 'window' and the unknown words are bowl, crow, pillow, cockroach, goat and toad.  When writing sentences it's important to know what your students are capable of reading and understanding as a group and individually.  Here are some possible sentences.
 
bowl: “In the morning Sayuri eats a bowl of sweets.”  (Ideally you will have a picture of a bowl of sweets.  At this stage some children will struggle with the words "the" and "of", but now is a good time for them to start learning.)
crow: “A big black crow is in Ami's hand.”
pillow: “A soft yellow pillow is on Juzo's bed.”
cockroach: “A big brown cockroach is in Shuntaro's sandwich.”  (Shuntaro has a good sense of humour.)
goat: “A goat is eating Maya's homework.”
toad: “Ten big green toads are in David's kitchen sink.”  I'm prepared and have a picture of a kitchen sink as well as a picture of a toad.
 
That's just two variations of "mystery card".  I hope that you will give them a try and come up with some other ideas on how to use this activity.

David is a school owner of 24 years, part-time teacher at Kanoya Taiku Daigaku, Kagoshima ETJ coordinator, a columnist for ETLNews, author of Blending a Hand and creator of many teaching materials and games for children.

Alan Meisch "rhymes with quiche"
Textless Storybooks

I was recently reminded how important it is for our students to want to use English for genuine communication, not just to repeat what they hear, read a given text aloud, or produce the English needed to perform an exercise. When a child is bursting with a thought or feeling born in their own mind or heart, what a powerful language learning gift it is if we can enable them to express that thought or feeling in English. Textless storybooks are a tool that enables us to give our students this gift. 

Now, reading a storybook with your students might not sound like anything new or out of the ordinary, but if the story and the images are compelling, and if you keep a good handle on the pacing and the way the “text” is engaged, it can be one of the highlights of your lesson.

The salient point of such books is not that they lack text, but that they tell a compelling story that can be thoroughly understood and enjoyed without a single word of text. The pictures don’t just complement, reinforce, or support the story—they tell it. With this kind of book, even a six-year old pre-reader can feel on a par with even the teacher in terms of negotiating the story. This can be very empowering for students who might feel inadequate or inferior when negotiating a story with text. Here’s a peek at the super-simple approach to textless storybooks that has been such a success in my classroom. 

Let’s say we have just finished a page in a book in which a burglar is sneaking into a kitchen, at the same moment that the man of the house is sneaking downstairs to investigate a suspicious noise he has heard. We turn the page and see that there is a cat sleeping on the floor in the kitchen, and in the dark the burglar doesn’t realize (but we do) that he is about to step on the sleeping cat’s tail. At the same time, the man of the house is about to step on roller skate left at the bottom of the stairs by a careless child. There will be numerous other details on this page that are worth noticing as well. 

Students take turns pointing out one thing they see on the page. A very low-level student can simply point, and the teacher can supply the English. A high-level student can choose one element in the picture, and describe and comment on it in detail. They might also want to predict what might happen next. The teacher can assist as little or as much as each student needs, with vocabulary, grammar structures, and whatever else applies. In this way, it is very easy to spontaneously adjust the level of the task to each student. 

ADVANTAGES OF THE ACTIVITY:
— It is highly engaging (assuming an appropriate book has been chosen). Children and adults alike simply love, love, love it!
— It offers excellent recycling of language—both vocabulary and structure.
— The same activity—often the same book—can be used with all ages (six years and up), and all levels of student. 
— It requires minimal preparation time. (How long will it take you to pull the book off the shelf and open it?)

DISADVANTAGES OF THE ACTIVITY:
— It is probably only practical for small groups—perhaps up to six students. 
— It is not likely to fit snugly with other components of a structured curriculum. 

I think the power of this activity is that the students do not feel they are being fed English, and then asked to do something with it. They feel they are being given a story, and are pulled by the story, not pushed by the expectation of language learning. They are first given a reason to want to communicate, then they are assisted in doing so. 

In addition, although the teacher keeps control of the book (see below), each student gets to choose what they will point out in the picture (perhaps what is most fascinating to them, or perhaps what they feel most able to talk about in English) and gets to use as much or as little English as they feel ready to produce. 

TIPS:
— Take your time with each page. You don’t have to milk it for all it’s worth, but most of the significant (even if small) details should be noticed and commented on by someone. With some books I have taken ten, fifteen, or even twenty minutes to fully exploit everything a single page has to offer. 
— I stretch a book out over several lessons, as one of several activities in each lesson. I don’t advise using the whole class time for just the book reading. And don’t try to cram a whole book all in at one go!
— There must be a rule that no one can flip ahead to see what is going to happen, but anyone whose turn it is can always look back at previous pages to see things that might have been missed before. Any looking back should be initiated by the students, though you might try to pique their interest: “Was that cat there before?” Note that it is important, especially with younger, impulsive students, that the teacher maintain control of the book. Otherwise, students may flip ahead to satisfy their burning curiosity, and destroy the need for and value of spoken language in negotiating the story. Don’t sate the students’ curiosity—use it as fuel to feed the fire! 
— Attention among students awaiting their turns rarely wanders as long as the pictures are rich enough and the story engaging enough. (If they’re not rich and engaging enough, you’ve got the wrong book. See “Choosing the Right Book,” below.) 

CHOOSING THE RIGHT BOOK: 
— You want a book with a compelling story and lots of visual details, especially details that are significant to the plot. And, ideally, you want a book that can appeal to as wide a range of ages as possible. (As long as the story is interesting to the students, you won’t need to worry about level of language ability.) 
— Look for a story that will recycle language—both vocabulary and grammatical structures. 
— The more whimsical, bizarre, or unpredictable, the better. (Although a plot that invites predictions is a plus.) 
— Simple children’s books such as Mercer Mayer’s “A Boy, a Dog, and a Frog” are terrific, but they are quite limited in terms of the vocabulary and structure that would be likely to be used in sharing them. You will get a lot more mileage from books that are more complex and richer with detail, and that will appeal to all ages of readers. 

Books I have used with great success: 
* Flotsam: David Wiesner (Clarion) 
Whimsical, and great for trying to figure out the larger picture as the story unfolds. 
* The Flower Man: Mark Ludy (Green Pastures)
A sweet, gentle story with myriad peripheral stories.  
* Full Moon Soup: Alastair Graham (Dial) 
A bit spooky, but the all-time favorite in my classroom! 
* Spot the Differences: Steven Rosen (Scholastic) 
No plot, and little recycling of vocabulary, but it is a format that students are familiar and comfortable with.  
* Anno’s Spain and others by Mitsumasa Anno. 
I haven’t tried this one yet. It is not as compelling as most of those above, but it looks suitable, and I expect it would be readily available in Japan. 

I have been teaching for over ten years, but I am still rather new to teaching children. I still teach adults, but children comprise about two-thirds of my students. Both are a pleasure and a challenge, but in quite different ways. And it just keeps getting more interesting and more satisfying. As one song says, "The greatest adventure is what lies ahead."

Carla Wilson
Dice and concentration
Recently I have been doing some activities which consist of two games in one. One part of the activity is more game-ish although still with a language element, while the other one has more of a language element. One mixed activity I have been using combines concentration (shinkeisuijaku) and dice throwing.

Materials: 12 sided dice and level-appropriate concentration cards

How to play: Write 1-12 on the whiteboard. Next to each number, depending on the level of the class, write a letter, a word, the beginning, or ending, of a sentence, or a question. The student shakes the dice, reads the indicated letter or word, completes the sentence or answers the question. After that, they get to turn two concentration cards over. Again the concentration cards are level-appropriate but usually consist of pictures and letters/words, pictures of things with the same initial letter e.g. banana and bag, or questions and answers.

For beginner level students who are just learning to read and write, the whiteboard could look something like this,

h 7. t
a 8. e
j 9. u
c 10. l
y 11. k
m 12. n

For a class who are reading CVC words, it would look something like this,

hat 7. tip
hot 8. fat
jam 9. ant
pit 10. leg
can 11. keg
mop 12. mat

For a class who can read well, it may look something like this,

Dogs are bigger than .......... 7. Can you play the piano?
Cows are smaller than ........ 8. Do you have a pet?
What color is a banana? 9. How old are you?
How many students are there in this room? 10. What day is it today?
Mount Fuji is higher than .......... 11. Horses are faster than .........
What sport do you like? 12. Hiroshima is warmer than ............

-- I have only played this game in small classes but there is no reason why it couldn’t be played in a large class with groups of 4-6 each having a dice and a set of concentration cards.

-- It is adaptable to any level, as the 12 tasks can be adjusted easily, as can the concentration cards.

-- Having two simple games/activities incorporated into one activity seems to help keep more easily distracted children engaged. Their brains are having to switch between two things and this seems to keep them more focused. It also seems to help prevent the problem of the children memorising letters/words by their position in the game instead of reading them each time.

-- It can be played as a competitive game with children competing for the most pairs of cards, or it can be played as a co-operative game with students working together to get all the pairs within a time limit.

-- Students may start to memorise rather than read the letters/words/sentences even with the mental moving back and forth between activities. If this starts to happen, the teacher can start to change some of what is written on the board midway through the game.

-- The general principle of combining two activities into one can be applied widely to various activities.

Carla Wilson is director of children’s courses and a teacher trainer at David English House in Hiroshima. She also teaches classes at Hiroshima University Attached Elementary School.

Share this:

Tweet

Permalink | Leave a comment

• Classroom Management (1)
• Classroom Resources
• Elementary School English (1)
• Games and Activities (1)
• Very Young Learners

• What activity have you been using successfully in class recently?

• What activity have you been using successfully in class recently?