I would like to make it enthusiastically clear that the only games and activities that actually work with students who are learning a language, games that don’t waste time, are games that delivery hefty amounts of CI without the use of L1.
That means dumping most if not all of the games and “learning activities” that we have developed or borrowed from colleagues over the years. They don’t work. They may engage the kids, but at what cost?
We now know that games and activities, with their totally unproductive mix of English and visiting between students, are used by us to the great detriment of our programs. We might as well not be teaching our students when we use those activities.
The value is in the comprehensible input. Accordingly, I have developed a CI based game that actually delivers pure CI to teach time and date expressions. Moreover, it is a marvelously effecive tool to further personalize our classrooms. We all know that, like using comprehensible input and using SLOW, we can never personalize enough. We can always find out more and more bizarre and yet meaningful things about our kids that the other kids in the class never seems to forget.
So here is the one game that actually delivers pure CI for me (I’m sure there are more and if you have one share it here – I’ve added this one to a new category called “Games – CI based” for this site in the category list). Here is how to play this game with your students:
1. Just look at the kids to start a class and say “I’m psychic.” in the target language. That gets their attention. They look at you with that “What’s next?” look of genuine intrest.
2. Then look at one kid who likes to play the game and start thinking. Put your hand on your chin and look up into the air and tap your fingers on your chin and act like you are trying to figure out something. That builds interest.
3. All of a sudden, point at the kid and say a month, any month, like March. Act as if you are certain about that month. Say it stongly, sing it, chant it. Of course, the kids, who have never done a chapter in a book called “Months, Calendar, Time of Day”, are curious to know what you are saying, and so they all signal you with the fist punch move that they use whenever they don’t understand the CI they are experiencing.
4. This takes you to the board to clarify, since you went out of bounds in this freestyle kind of PQA. Just write down “March” in the TL and say that this is what you have psychically understood is that kid’s birthday. Be proud of how psychic you are.
5. Of course you are wrong, so you then act outraged that your psychic abilities have abandoned you. You ask if someone is “jamming” your powers with negative thought patterns (when I do this I look directly at my most negative kid with a smile). then try again.
6. Once you have guessed the month, start the entire process over with the date. Another valuable target that comes up in this activity is, “He was born/You were born” so include that into the CI as well.
7. Once you have the kid’s month and date of birth, occasionally throwing in the year just so that the class can hear that CI as well, you go to another kid or on to your lesson. It’s probably best just to work with one kid per class in this way.
You can also guess things like time (the time they were born). They can lie to you. Just have them write down a time on a piece of paper and show it to the person next to them and then begin the guessing game again.
This game teaches them time and calendar expressions using comprehensible input and is more fun for them than filling out blanks in a workbook on this topic.