eslHQ - vocab ideas

I teach at 2 JHSs in Japan, and last week I just did a game that went over pretty well with my 3rd year students (U.S. 9th grade). I did the game with both my classes of about 20 students, and they actually got into the game and even smiled and laughed, which is a rarity for me. This would be better for a review game than an introduction game.

I called the game English Challenge, and split the class into 6 groups - A, B, C, D, E & F. Each team was competing against the others, but A, C, & E and B, D, & F were also grouped into a team. So, if group A got an answer right, they got 5 points for their own team, and A, C, & E collectively got 10 points as a group - so A got 15 and C & E got 10.

I split the Challenge into 4 parts, with two parts being English related (Spelling and Fill in the Blank) and two parts that were random games that had nothing to do with English, but made it a little more fun.

First we did spelling - A student from each team went to the board and I called out a word and the first student to spell it correctly won that round. We did that for about 15 minutes. Then, for 3 minutes, I had them play the card game war in pairs. At the end of the 3 minutes, whoever had the most cards got 5 points (this part was just individual team points). Then we did fill in the blank. I wrote a line on the board for each letter of the unknown word. Then I said the sentence. For example, I would write _ _ _ on the board, and then say: (Blank) many pets do you have? The first student to say "How" would win the round. That lasted about 15 mintutes. For the last few minutes of class, I had them play Jenga - but my Jenga set is a bone jenga set so it has a skull that sits on top. If the student could take out a bone from the stack, their team got 5 points. If the skull fell, but the stack was still standing, the student's team lost 5 points. If a student toppled the stack, then their team lost 10 points.

The students had a lot of fun, and even a few of the students that rarely speak because they're level is a little lower than most of the class actually got some of the points for their team.

Hope that helps,
the o