I've used the end of year mini comics lesson a number of times, but the original lesson doesn't include any editable templates so please consider this an updated version of that lesson.
It's Cards Against Humanity but Appropriate For School™!
This was made with my 3nensei kids in mind. Add/edit/whatever you need to make things fun.
I reccommend printing the cards on different coloured construction paper.
Draw a 5x5 (or 4x4 or 6x6 etc.) grid on the board and fill in each square with a random date. Secretly choose one of the squares to be the "mine" but don't tell anyone (except maybe the HRT). Split the students into groups and decide the order of the groups. Have the students janken; the winner of the group chooses one of the dates and says it in English. If the square is safe, replace the date with a number indicating how far the "mine" is.
You may be aware that I recently solicited the ALT community for responses to a questionnaire in the hopes that I could use the data to build a family feud style game. Well, I did my best, but only around 11 ALTs responded to my survey. I filled in the rest of the responses by soliciting my facebook friends, and ended up with about 55 responses. I've put it all together now, so here it is...
I found this game on ALTInsider and modified it for my 2nd-year students' 2nd semester mid-term review. I also modified a few aspects of the game to adjust for classroom space and other things.
Print:
BRIEF OUTLINE: Students review vocab they’ve learned by pulling words out of a box and getting their team to guess by drawing, gesturing or using hints in English.
DETAILED EXPLANATION:
Organize students in pairs then handout ‘My Super Friend work sheet A + B’ to each pair.
Read both paragraphs to entire class once, then have each pair read their respective paragraphs to themselves.
Have students highlight or underline any points they think are important for answering the questions on the worksheet.
Next have pairs read their paragraphs to each-other and exchange information about their characters by asking the questions provided on the worksheet.
This is a warm-up routine that one of my 1nensei OTEs and I do every lesson. It aims to keep the most basic and pertinent knowledge in the students’ heads at the beginning of every lesson so that they’ll be primed for the lesson, and also to help them learn it off by heart. It’s fairly basic, but pretty comprehensive.
We start by asking the whole class four questions
Students are divided into teams, preferably six. Each team nominates a leader, and on their turn the leader comes to the blackboard.
They say the name of a Japanese prefecture, such as Hyogo. They then have thirty seconds (or a full minute for first years) to come up with a word that starts with each letter of the prefecture. For example, Hello You Orange Great October. No repeats, and the words must have at least three letters.
Provide each student with an index card-sized profile card with pre-made spaces for the following categories: Their favourite subject, favourite sport, their club activity, their gender, if they have sisters/brothers (separate spaces), if they have pets and if they wear glasses. Have them write their name at the very bottom.
Students are placed in groups with even numbers if possible. The students make a line. The student at the beginning of each line is given a card with a sentence on it. The first student tries to memorize the sentence for approximately one minute. The card is then taken away from the student. When the teacher says start, the student must pass the message to his/her classmate by whispering. The message is passed along the line until it reaches the last person at the back.
Make a handout with 20 sentences on it. 13 sentences should be correct. 7 sentences should be incorrect in some way.
Students will work in their groups to review the 20 sentences in the handout. They are to decide A) which sentences are correct and which are incorrect, and B) the changes needed for the incorrect sentences.
Each group will receive a set amount of money to buy sentences.
Students must bid on sentences as they’re called out randomly one at a time. They are then told if the sentence is good or bad.
Set up the word search game board in Excel. Choose how many rows you want, i.e. 10×10
Put the students into teams.
Every student starts this game with three colored strips of paper (ohajiki are ok), plus one mini flashcard (they are in the back of the textbook, or you could make your own.) The goal of the life game is to use English to get as many lives as possible, while avoiding death.
A player makes a true or false statement about a card and tries to put on a “poker face” so that the other player cannot see if he is telling the truth. The object is to put all the cards down on the table.
This baseball review game is played in teams (up to six players) with the teachers playing the role of “question pitchers.”
Ahh, the age old game of scrabble. Here is a full set for your printing, cutting and playing pleasure.
I made them at A4 size but I recommend printing them at B4 size. Print them, cut them out and stick magnets to them. Throw ’em in a bag.
Rules
You can put the students in teams against each other or have them all against the teacher.
A fun quiz game that can be adapted for a grammar point, or great for those open-ended lessons where your OTE asks you to “introduce your country” or something like that.
Preparation:
I love Magnetic Poetry but it’s not available in Japan. So I made my own, and made it into a game.
A good activity for the end of year, once all the grammar points on the syllabus have been completed.
Divide students into groups and ask them to find three separate categories of items:
People to Find—students are to ask each other questions and find a person who has had a specific experience (e.g. saw a movie last weekend).
Things to Write—students are to find information that can be found around the English room/classroom and write it down.
The object of the game is for the students to give away as many of their one yen coins to the other players as possible. (Nobody likes one yen coins do they? They’re fiddly, too light and hard to pick up—that’s why they want to get rid of them!). The person with the least coins at the end of 1 minute 40 seconds is the winner.
The rules are as follows:
A wordsearch for each lesson of the previous edition of the New Crown Grade 2 textbook using the new words learned in that chapter. The wordsearches are designed to be completed as a group with points received for both finding the word and writing the Japanese translation.
The wordsearches are best printed 4 to an A4 page and then made into a poster using the poster printer.
These books are Colleen’s idea!
For the last lesson of the year, gather together all the material you have covered and turn it into a book so it can be easily reviewed.
This a a variation on the game Typhoon. I used this in Elementary 3rd and 4th grade for the last lesson to review the previous lessons.
Spend one class completing a handout about the information students will include in their introduction. Use grammar points they have learned the year before. An example is:
The First Class
This activity is similar to the Speed Dating activity from Summer School.
Introduction
The regular activity is to be used as a 10-15 minute warm-up activity to get the students thinking and excited about English at the beginning of every class.
For 2/3-nensei at JHS and HS, you'll most likely need 30 minutes or more to initially review and check the understanding for each sentence and example options for each side. I usually start with A side and move onto B side in 3 or so weeks.
This activity is similar to the Speed Dating activity from Summer School.
First, figure out a path your students can take to rotate around the room. For desks where two students sit, one will be the mover and the other will be the interviewer and stay in place.
Students race to write a story about a given topic on the board. E.g., zombies, Japanese/American foods, Christmas break, favorite movies, etc.
2 or 3 groups with 5~8 students each
Teacher(s) teaches new vocab with flashcards on the blackboard. Get the students into teams (4+), assigning each team a number. Write the team numbers on the backboard (for scoring purposes). Select 5 flashcard and line them up on the blackboard. Draw a chalk outline around these flashcards to help the students see which cards they need to memorize.
Demonstrate with the HRT how the game works:
This lesson is a result of discussion at Job Training 2012. Special thanks to Matt Mullins, Chris Shirley, Malaya Viloria, David Howard, and Rory Harnden.
This is an adaptation of the Keyword Game, in which students race for an eraser once the ‘key word’ is called.
Warm Up- 5 minutes
Ask student volunteers to spell as many words as they can in English in 3 minutes (teacher writes them on the board as they are spelled)
Introduction to New Material- 10 minutes
Write each of the objective words on the board
Have students repeat
Have students translate the words into Japanese (have the OTE confirm answers)
Repeat again
SUKI SUKI JANKEN
Level ES 1-6
Duration 5-10 minutes
Grammar point I like ~.
Objective To interact using pictures and simple English phrases.
Resources simple pictures printed on thick paper & cut, colored pencils, pens, or crayons
Preparation:
I have been playing the keyword game with my students for years and it was getting far too repetitive so I decided to mix it up a bit.
Students play in pairs, left-hand side students are one team, and the right-hand side students are the other team. After playing each round, I count how many winners from the left side, and how many from the right. I give one point to the team with most winners that round. It can continue for as many rounds as there are vocab to learn but I don't usually play it for that long.
This game is derived from a classic Japanese children's game of the same name. In this description of the game, animals will be used as the target vocabulary, though the game can be used equally well for colours, foods, sports, etc.
All students are assigned a different target vocabulary. For example, in this case, we have cats, elephants, lions, birds, etc. Students may have a card with their word, or remember their word.
This is a bingo based interview lesson.
Give students the worksheet, so they can see the questions to be used during the explanation.
These mini comics are a fun way to finish the year and the students get something to take home with them. They are a little difficult but the students can take their time and you can go around the class and help out. Make sure you check the content and change it to suit your schools.
Here are some links on how to make the mini-comics:
Videos:
Websites:
A simple worksheet helping the students learn the past interrogative form.
The worksheet is divided into ten questions. Each question has a statement and three possible options for a question relating to the statement. Students go through the sheet and tick the correct question.
The whole activity shouldn’t take more than ten minutes to complete and a further ten to go through.
This game can be adapted to a wide variety of key questions, phrases, and vocabulary instruction and practice.
For the purpose of this explanation, we will assume the lesson is:
“How are you?”
“I’m ~ (happy/sad/fine/sick/angry)”
Credit goes to Luke Orme for the the original conceptualization!
Attached are Word and PDF versions of the rules. Loosely bilingual (Japanese/English) for your convenience. (If there’s weird Japanese, I apologize.)
Zombie Janken 2.0 rules
Disclaimer: Kids + zombies + janken = potential chaos. However, it usually doesn’t get too crazy even in a classroom.
Introduction
This is a personal adaptation of the basic typhoon game that most students will be familiar with, but with the fun and excitement of Pokemon !
Resources
Before the Lesson
This lesson plan is a result of a discussion at Summer Job Training 2012. Many thanks to Amanda Ribarchik, Trichelle Williams, Ashley Williams, Nathan Boerke, and Sandy Cheng for their contributions.
This game functions much the way Typhoon would and is an excellent review game.
Attached is a set of 40 game cards and 8 team cards. I made my deck by sandwiching a game card and piece of colored construction paper and then applying magnets and laminating. The deck will last forever this way.
Divide the class into teams as you see fit. I usually use rows or lunch groups for the sake of simplicity. Each team then selects a mascot from the 8 team cards.
2015.1.30 SDC
Powerpoint: Get on point, Stay on point
Erik Chen
Tyler Van Parys
Carisa Crittendon
Here is the powerpoint used during the seminar. The typhoon slides were removed because they weren’t finished yet.
Contents of powerpoint:
Master Template
Combines shapes
Background removal
Animation
Graph Animation
Hyperlinks
Selection Pane
Jeopardy
I have been playing the keyword game with my students for years and it was getting far too repetitive so I decided to mix it up a bit.
Students play in pairs, left-hand side students are one team, and the right-hand side students are the other team. After playing each round, I count how many winners from the left side, and how many from the right. I give one point to the team with most winners that round. It can continue for as many rounds as there are vocab to learn but I don’t usually play it for that long.
A blank version of the the infamous dinosaur comics which I have added speech bubbles to to make it easier for students to write sentences.
Tell students they are to write the missing dialogue, anything is ok. For slower students allow them to work in pairs.
Make a grid. The left side of the grid will be one half of a sentence, e.g. “Let’s ~ “, “How about we ~ ” etc. The top of the grid will be the second half, “go to a movie.” The top-left square is blank.
Attached is a blank powerpoint which can be used for self introduction quizzes or any jeopardy quiz.
It is arranged so that when you click on the points in the grid it goes directly to that quiz question. To click back to the points grid you should click the arrow in the bottom right of each question slide. If you don’t click on the arrow and just move onto the next slide you will miss the points grid and go straight to a new question. To finish the quiz and go on to the last page you can click on the “quiz” box above the points grid.
This is a game format to adapt to any grammar point with the students in groups.
Draw a racing track on the board, get each group to randomly choose a Mario Kart character. Show the items from the mystery box and briefly explain what they do.
Ask the target question, this can be a general quiz question or related to any grammar point. Each group should write their answer down and correct groups get to continue.
This is a TV show quiz which can be adapted to any grammar point. The original game works by splitting the class into two teams (white and red). The aim of the red team is to make a path vertically on the grid by answering questions correctly while the white team is trying to make a path horizontally the grid.
This lesson is a result of discussion at Job Training 2012. Special thanks to Matt Mullins, Chris Shirley, Malaya Viloria, David Howard, and Rory Harnden.
This is a whole-class game wherein students build a castle, whilst attempting to destroy that of the other team.
This activity is based on a fairly well known Japanese game show called “Q Sama” so most students should catch on rather quickly.
Each corner of the classroom is designated with 4 keywords: number, emotion, vocabulary word, anything basically. One student is chosen to come up and be the caller. The caller counts down (from 10, 5, whatever you decide) while the other students quickly to move to a corner of the room. After the countdown, the caller calls out one of the keywords and whichever students that are in that corner are out and must sit down. When you get down to the final 4 students, they must each choose a corner and split up to make the game have a winner.
This version of karuta puts an interesting twist on the old stand-by, usually with less crying at elementary school.
1. Have the students make groups and hand out the karuta cards.
2. Establish a rotation from group to group; clockwise usually works best.
3. Say your first karuta word.
4. The student who got the card should keep the card with them, and join the next group in the rotation. (There should be a newly vacated seat from the winner of that group who just advanced).
This is a fun, general game that can be used to learn any kind of vocab. The aim of the game is to keep the balloon in the air by hitting it like a volleyball.
Rules
In this instance, the game will use months as the vocab.
Evolution, or "Shinka" in Japanese, is a popular game that your kids may already know. It can be used with any grammar point or vocabulary. The goal of the game is to reach the final stage of evolution.
This is a fun game that fits a few different grammar points. For explanation purposes I will use the grammar “Do you have a …?”
1. First teach students a vocabulary set of your choice. I did this when I did a mushi-tori (bug catching) lesson, so they learned the names of lots of Japanese insects.
2. Pass out at least 4 random mini cards to each student. If they get four different bugs, they are very lucky. They shouldn’t show their cards to their friends.
This game is a soccer game with two teams of 11, plus some reserves on the "bench". There can be any number of reserves on each. It takes the format of a real soccer game, with the teacher as the main referee. The ball is kicked up and down the field according to how the questions are answered by each team member. Each team member is given a number, each team member of the other team is also given a number. Everyone will have a member of the opposing team with the same number as theirs, an opponent (different colored numbers).
The students play in teams (rows or groups) and they play in rotations within their team.
For higher level students, students can start with 2 sentences from Talking Point, complete one round, before competing again with more sentences until they complete the dialogue.
This is a great game that can supplement a full Easter lesson or stand alone at the end of a lesson for a quick Easter intro. Pass out the "Easter Egg Hunt" worksheet to each student (no longer available - make your own!). Be sure to tell the students to NOT write their names on the sheet. Go over the sentences on the worksheet and then have the students fill in the blanks. For JHS, I use the following sentences:
1. I play __________________________(sport, music instrument)
2. I like to eat ______________________
It takes 2 to 単語!
Easy mode (JHS 1): one dictionary per group
This can be used to quiz spelling, vocabulary or grammar points. The teacher makes sure some things are correct and somethings are incorrect.
This game can be used for all ages, any subject/grammar, and any occasion. However if there is concern, 5th grade up is very safe.
This activity can be used for any target English. It does not have to be yes or no questions as the cards above indicate. However, the subject/grammar needs to be able to be conceptualized into a 2 person exchange/conversation.
"What did you do yesterday?"
"I studied math. What did you do?"
I made this game for my low-level, generally misbehaving students. This will take a solid bit of prep! The board game itself is straightforward, just roll the dice and move your game piece.
Prep! About 45 Minutes
Attached are the questions I made, game pieces, and the game board (B4 size). It's probably best to laminate the game board if you can.
Objective
Procedure
(20-25 mins)
