Susan Gross once said that she made up over 200 excellent games for her students during her career and not one of them contributed to her students learning French. Of course, she had not heard of comprehensible input during those years when she was the self-described “Queen of Games”. We don’t put games on this site for the reason that few games work to create comprehensible input and are therefore worthless, except for the WCTA, but here is one that relates to stories so we publish it here. It is from Leigh Anne and might be useful for anyone who has “that kind of class”:
Leiogh Anne describes the game:
Keep in mind that we don’t actually play this game in my class any more. It’s noisy. Plus, I’ve stopped playing games since I found Anne Matava’s stories.
a) Practice for the game with the teacher saying the beginnings of sentences from various stories and letting the students finish each sentence as a class. Or practice à la ‘Numbered Heads Together.’
[Google ‘Numbered Heads Together’ if you don’t know what it is.]
Extend the practice (or call it a scrimmage and introduce the rules) by allowing individual volunteers to add bizarre words and phrases that vary from the original story versions to the beginnings of sentences that you provide orally or in a written fashion. You could even have them be the teacher, starting sentences for their partner to finish.
Try to practice as much as you can before the game begins.
b) Decide what the reward for the winning team will be. Score should be very close at all times.
c) Decide what penalties will be assessed for use of English or badgering a classmate. My classes are *full* of 16 year-old athletes. Ugh. So easy for them to get crazily competitive.
d) Stick a stuffed animal on a chair in front of the room; divide the class into two teams.
Play:
1) Each team sends a player to stand on either side of the ‘chair.’
2) Teacher says a part of a line from a story.
3) First student to grab the stuffed animal and finish the sentence *in any comprehensible fashion* wins 1 point for their team.
4) Either student may leave the front of the room to get ideas from a student on their team in the audience.
5) Add any other rules you like. For example, if the student with possession of the animal adds two details instead of just one, they can get 2 pts, etc.
It is fun to see them encouraging each other to finish sentences. It is stressful for the kids to come to the front of the room, but most students do ok because they know who to ask if they need any help. I make mine keep their current seating arrangement, because they always try to get the smart kid to sit up front. It is funny to see the students from one team watch their representative run around their side of the room while their competing player is doing the same exact thing on the other side of the room.
Note: I allowed students to ‘ditch.’ They just go back to their seat after hearing the ‘prompt.’ Their team does not want them to do that, but if a student ditches play, another player runs up to the front to take their place and finishes the sentence. However, the replacement player has to wait until everyone else on their team has gone to have their turn again.
You may determine that ‘ditching’ doesn’t work. Or, you may make it so that the ‘replacement player’ can stay in play without affecting the dynamic of the game.
Sorry for the ambiguity — that is one of the reasons games are so hard in my classroom. I want both teams to have a fair shot…and that can require some manipulation of the game.
You could even make it so that if a student ‘ditches’ they could be replaced by a student from the opposing team!