What am I? is an exciting guessing game. It's naturally fun for EFL
students to see who can guess the answer first. Wrong answers add to the
excitement, and laughter always brightens the learning atmosphere.
The colorful cards are rather big and sturdy. They consist of pictures
focusing on one object on one side of the card and easily understandable
clues to identify the picture on the other side. The set includes 24
cards.
Rules
Set up two teams and make one student the scorekeeper. The teacher
faces the teams and reads one clue at a time, repeating when necessary.
There are three clues for each picture. For example, one card reads in the
following way:
- I have four legs.
- I like bones.
- I like to catch balls.*
As the teacher reads one clue at a time, members from both teams shout out
what they think the object is. If they are wrong, the teacher continues to
the next clue until someone guesses it correctly. When someone guesses it
correctly, the teacher hands the team the card and the scorekeeper gives
that team a point; the teacher then moves on to the next card. The teacher
can check back with the scorekeeper from time to time to ask for the tally.
"How many points does the New York Team have?" "How many points does the
San Francisco team have?" to which the scorekeeper would reply. When all
the cards have been used, the team winning the most points wins. (If no one
guesses the object, the teacher can go back and repeat the clues one by one
and give additional hints.)
The vocabulary words in What am I? are: cat, dog, fish, chopsticks, ramen,
pizza, pumpkin, apple, strawberry, chocolate, ice cream, flower, baby,
computer, TV, clock, bath, newspaper, book, pencil, piano, ring, shoes and
key. This game works well with students from elementary school level to
beginning adults.
As always, the students think winning is the object of the game. But the
teacher knows otherwise. Through this activity, the reading of the clues on
the back of the cards builds listening, reading and reasoning skills in
that the students have to guess the right answer before their opponents do.
Students also learn to listen for "key words" as opposed to listening to
and trying to understand each and every word. The game also encourages
students to think in English under pressure, as they lose too much time
translating into Japanese. This game enables the teacher to use various
teaching methods to initiate and maintain good English learning habits.
Also, What am I? encourages students to guess, and in so doing, it helps
them overcome their fear of making errors.
Suggested modifications are as follows: With higher level classes, a
student can be the teacher. Also, to make the game more exciting, the
teacher can give 5 points to the team that guesses the mystery object with
the first clue, 4 points to the team that guesses it with the second clue
and 3 points to the team that guesses it with the third clue.
Actually the game moves along like a quiz show, and the pace, mood and
stimulation all combine to make it an ideal activity to use at the end of
class for the last ten minutes. When we play this game at Little America,
the students always walk out of class smiling!
*P.S. Did you guess the answer to the above riddle? DOG...
Helene Jarmol Uchida
Helene Jarmol Uchida is a veteran teacher with teaching, curriculum
development and teacher training experience in the U.S., Greece and Japan.
She is the director of the Fukuoka-based
Little America English Schools
and lectures at Fukuoka Kyoiku Daigaku. She holds the
LATEM seminars every year
in cities throughout Japan and is also the author of 'The Challenge Book',
an interactive English book and CD especially created for Japanese
elementary school students.
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