Last week, we had to go to Malaysia to get some new visas, so I only was here for my Thursday and Friday classes. As such, I didn’t want to address the next topic on the syllabus. I just needed something of a stopgap lesson for those two days, and after a bunch of googling for good ESL games for large classrooms, I was still at a loss.
Most of the game ideas I find online are so difficult for me to see how they could actually be implemented in the classroom. I mean, there are teachers out there doing it, so it’s possible… I don’t know if it’s a limitation of my school, my students, or me, but most of these ideas I just can’t see getting my students to do successfully.
So anyway, I made up a game. It’s such a simple idea, and I was feeling really good about my ability to give the directions and get the students doing it.
The idea was, I’d give them ten verbs. We’d first go over the meaning and pronunciation, and then the past simple tense for each. Then I’d divide the students into teams, giving each team a deck of flashcards with the verbs. Each student would take one or two, depending on the number of students on the team. Every verb needed to be assigned one student on each team.
Then I’d randomly choose a verb from the list and the student holding that verb card needed to run to the board and write a sentence using that verb. I explained that the teams would get points for sentence quality, sentence length, being the first finished, being the funniest, and being the prettiest (by drawing pictures to go with their sentence). The competition and open-endedness, I thought, would make for a fun game.
So my first class back on Thursday, we start my homegrown game, and it is a TOTAL DUD. Like seriously awful. They understand the rules and all, but there is zero enthusiasm or interest. I call the first couple verbs, and students kind of non-chalantly walk to the board, write boring sentences, and sit down.
For each sentence they write, I try to still grade enthusiastically, teasing them for not being funny or drawing pretty enough. At least this gets a little laughter from them.
Then, around the third or fourth word, something changes. Something clicks. They start to prepare sentences ahead of time, try to finish before the other team, and the sentences get more creative. The students start to get really into their own sentences and those that the other teams are writing. When I grade, they yell and cheer for their own, and try to convince me that they were the funniest.
My game is redeemed! It’s totally working for the rest of the class time! By the end, I’m feeling great again about my game, and ready to go to the next class to do it again. The game works!
Except the next class thinks it’s a total dud too. For the first three or so words. Then it clicks! The exact same thing happens! By the fifth word, every student in the class is really into it!
It’s the craziest thing, I played this game with seven classes last week, and every single one followed this same pattern. It’s going terribly, but if we just chug along through a few words, it does a complete 180. One girl who is kind of bitchy sometimes was initially telling me things like “Teacher, no fun, new game” and by the end changed her tune to “Teacher, good game! Fun game!” Thanks, bitchy girl!