Games Reviews

Welcome to my Game Corner. Here I introduce a game for you to use in your classes to help make English come alive.

Helene Jarmol Uchida

The Gesture Game is a simple English game which is ideal for small or big group competitions for elementary school classes and up. Students have fun laughing at each other and trying to guess in English what is on the Gesture Game picture card. There are two sets of gesture cards, one easier (junior) and one more difficult (senior).

The class is divided into two teams. The teacher selects two students, one to be the "gesturer" for the game and the other to be the score-keeper.

The teacher shows the "gesturing" student the card. The student gestures or acts out the card without making any sounds. The first team to guess the word receives the card and the score-keeper gives that team a point. The team with the most cards at the end of the game wins.

After the students have guessed all the junior (yellow) cards, they can try the senior (purple) cards. The most difficult gesture cards are "snowman" and "curry rice." The ones that gets the most laughs are "washing machine," "spider," "helicopter" and "cockroach"!

(To begin with, the teacher should ask an outgoing and active student to act out the cards. After the game has been played several times, the teacher can ask more docile students to give it a try.)

One of the merits of The Gesture Game, along with vocabulary expansion, is that it forces the students to think in English quickly. Also, by virtue of its format, it encourages students to guess and NOT be afraid of making a mistake. This is an excellent exercise for Japanese students who tend to hesitate since the only way to win points for teams is to shout out one's guess before someone else does.

It's always fun for everyone!

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