What can I say, I dislike how the competitive nature of games can turn so nasty in the classroom. In one class period, we can have both Jekyll and Hyde, and when I see too much Hyde, I get stressed out. But I also know from the results of my student surveys that next to story-telling and story-asking, games are the highest-rated classroom activities that my students enjoy and they feel that they help them learn (I suppose some games do). Of course, the key to making games work is to set clear expectations, especially with regard to behavior and sportsmanship, so that nasty competitiveness of Hyde does not occur. 

Since early in my career, I have felt that games allow us a time to trick students into learning. I do still use some games as just rote practice like Blooket with a word list but there are plenty of games that can be used in classes that are INPUT-based. I feel the best types of games are the INPUT-based ones and as my friend, Spanish teacher and trainer Andrea Schweitzer, likes to say: adding more and more target language INPUT into games is like adding spinach to a kid’s brownies: it can be a win for all. In this post, I will talk about two games that my students loved this year and one new game I cannot wait to try. 

I try to limit the amount of times I play the same game a year for the sake of novelty. This new game to me, called THE BLUFF GAME, came my way from a colleague – and even though I only played it twice, my Spanish IV students could not stop asking for it. I did not play as often as I could have because, as mentioned before, I did not make it an INPUT-based game; so I did not want to spend too much of my precious time with students just doing a white-board review game. As I write this I am now thinking that I am sure in the future I can figure out a way to make a more INPUT-based version. I found a detailed explanation of THE BLUFF GAME from Sara Chronister’s page here. 

As mentioned, I like novelty, but on the other hand my Spanish I class would have played my latest version of Trash-Basketball every single day, and since it motivated all students in the class, we did play it often. So here are my details for how I set up my Trash-Basketball game this year: 

GOAL: In 3 to 5 teams (depending on the size of a class), give each team a dry-erase board, marker, erase towel. Project a reading and together students must work to write the English meaning of a sentence. Then a team member takes their board to the teacher “to lock in” their answer (if it is not correct, they must return to their team and edit). Teams continue to “lock in” until all teams do. Then one team mate tries to make a basket in my recycling bin. The score is below and can change depending on the number of teams.    

-1ST TEAM TO LOCK-IN – IF IT IS CORRECT, YOU EARN A POINT AND A BASKET IS WORTH 3 POINTS.  

-2ND TEAM TO LOCK-IN – IF IT IS CORRECT, A BASKET IS WORTH 2 POINTS 

-3RD TEAM TO LOCK-IN – IF IT IS CORRECT, A BASKET IS WORTH 1 POINTS

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One of the things I love most about the world language teaching community and especially the grassroots movement of the those who have worked on building what is ADI (Acquisition-Driven Instruction), TCI: (Teaching with Comprehensible Input), CCLT (Comprehension-based Communicative Language Teaching), TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling), and/or simply the Natural Approach is that we all share our experiences, resources, and as a community continue to grow and support one another. In addition to blogs and social media groups, podcasts have also led the way for sharing ideas and supporting one another. This summer I listened to quite a few podcast episodes from Claudia Elliot’s Growing with Proficiency; her podcast can be found here and here is her website: https://growingwithproficiency.com/.

With 150 episodes, Claudia’s shared knowledge and resources are an exact example of the collaborative nature of our field. I listened to Episode 55 called Games and AI in the World Language Class. Since I cannot give away all of her game ideas – just listen to the episode for that, I do want to highlight one that I am super excited to play with students this school year. The game is called “Who Has the Question?,” and I like it because she has intentionally made it INPUT-based and it requires all students to be engaged in the game (too often students can just sit on the sidelines and not participate, which sometimes happened with my Trash-basketball games this year). The details are as follows: 

Game Activity: Who Has the Question? Idea from Claudia Elliot

1. Create a set of 20+ question cards in the target language that are either random PQA/Personal Questions, questions about a specific topic/theme, or questions related to class content/context from a story or other information discussed or read in class. 
2. Copy one set of question cards per the amount of teams you will have in a class and divide/cut them into individual cards (she says it is best to have teams of 3 to 5 students). 
3. Divide the class into teams and have students divide the question cards evenly amongst themselves. [If there are 20 question cards and 5 students per team, then each student gets 4 question cards].
4. Then the teacher says an answer in the target language to one of the questions. Students must look at their questions and decide which student has the correct question card. At first, students could work together but once the rules are understood then for accountability sake, students are working alone in order to read over their questions and decide the best choice. Before students can submit their answers, the teacher provides lots of wait-time and rereads the answer multiple times. 
5. When ready to see the answers, the teacher will give a count or a signal at which time the students who feel they have the answer come up to the teacher showing the question card and then earning the point for their team. Claudia says if she has a tie then students do a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who gets the point. 
6. This process continues.  (I think even more rounds could happen with students changing questions amongst those on their team).  

I like this game and idea because it is important for students to read and reread questions all of the time. Questions are not the easiest to construct in target language even though many of us as teachers were conditioned to feel that it’s an easy task. We know it is a Novice High skill just to regurgitate memorized questions and an Intermediate Low/Mid interpersonal speaking skill to create questions with some accuracy in the target language. This game provides students countless times to continue to reread questions. In fact, rereading content over and over is perhaps the best way to help students acquire language, and we know INPUT-based games can help us do this in a sneaky “spinach in the brownie” way. 

Like Jekyll and Hyde, games can be the battle between good and evil but there is no doubt that today’s super gamer generation can be highly motivated by games in the classroom. I am going to challenge myself this year to be more intentional by creating more INPUT-based games because then I will see it as a win-win for both students and me as a teacher working toward facilitating more acquisition.  

Want to chat? Let me know your student’s favorite games in the world language classroom?

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