[lewisknudsen]

I have a classroom of about 32 5th Grade students in Uijeongbu, South Korea.

The explanation may seem a bit complicated, but that's just cause I included all the little details about how to manage the game. The game itself is simple and my students really enjoyed it.

The classroom is divided into about 3 rows so I divided the class into 3 teams to play this game.

Each team is timed. I used a free online timer by searching on google.com and showed it on the classroom screen.

Each team takes a turn separately. A designated 'player one' starts when the timer starts. Player 1 turns around to the student behind him or her, holds up a certain number of fingers (between 1 and 7) and asks "What day is today?" The other team member must give the correct answer (e.g. [2 fingers] "It's Monday" or [5 fingers] "It's Thursday" and so on. This "What day is today" question and answer pattern continues throughout the whole team until the last team member has answered, and then the timer is stopped, and the time is written on the chalkboard or whiteboard. The team with the fastest time wins.

Tell the students they may not repeat the same day over and over again [e.g. [1 finger] "It's Sunday!" [1 finger] "It's Sunday! etc.] But I did let my students repeat every other day if they wanted. As it turned out, they ended up wanting to use a variety of days anyway.

After explaining the game, give the students about 5 minutes to practice it on their own, paying particular attention to some of the students who might not have caught the directions.
Make sure to practice the whole interaction with the whole class before starting the game!

Since it is most difficult to be the first team, I had the 'player 1's from each team play rock paper scissors to decide who got to go 3rd, 2nd, and 1st so that it would be more fair.

If possible leave time for each team to have a second try, since they might think of the first one as practice.

There will almost certainly be an uneven number of students in some teams, so count the students before hand and let the teams with fewer players know that they will have to repeat appropriately to make the timing fair.

I decided to teach Sunday as the first day, but some teachers will prefer to use Monday. It doesn't make a difference for the game.

Happy Teaching!