Digital Camera Scavenger Hunt

Level:Easy to Difficult

This game may require students to leave the classroom depending on how you set it up.

Make a list of things students must take photos of. Then put your students into teams, each with their own camera and have them go out and take the photos. The team that comes back first with all the photos is the winner.

Some ideas for lists are:

• bus, taxi, car, bicycle, etc.
• restaurant, post office, mail box, traffic light, etc.
• In the classroom: pencil, pen, eraser, blackboard, etc.
• Around the school: principal's office, copy machine, cafeteria, etc.

For further review of vocabulary, have the students look at all the photos and identify other things that appear in each photo.

Words Beginning with a Given Letter

Level:Medium to Difficult

The teacher chooses a letter from the alphabet. Then each student must say a word that begins with that letter. If a student repeats a word that has already been said, then he/she is out of the game. The game ends when only one student remains. That student is the winner. In high level classes students lose if they say a past form of the verb. Example: see-saw. You can increase the difficulty by adding a timer. Only allow each student 5 seconds to think of a word.

Survivor Spelling Game

Level:Any Level

Use this activity to review vocabulary. Make a list of vocabulary covered in previous lessons. Have students stand. Call out a vocabulary word. The first student begins by saying the word and giving the first letter, the second student the second letter of the word, the third student the third letter, and so on until the word is spelled correctly. If somebody makes a mistake they must sit down and we start from the beginning again until the word is spelled correctly. The last student must then pronounce the word correctly and give a definition in order to stay standing. The student who is left standing is the "survivor" and wins the game. I usually give them some type of prize. If all the students remain standing we have a pizza party at the end of the week.

The Alphabet Game

Level: Any Level

This game is used to practice alphabet and check their vocabulary. Do as a competition. Divide students into groups of five (it depends on the number of students you have) and ask them to stand in line. Give to the students of the front a marker to write on the whiteboard. Then draw with your finger an imaginary letter of the alphabet on the back of the students at the end of the line. They must do the same with the student in front of him/her and so on. The students with the marker are supposed to run to the board and write any word that begins with that letter.

The spelling games we can use in the developing speaking skills too. It is a half-truth that spelling can be picked up. Voracious readers are often good spellers, but not always, nor does every language learner read voraciously! A wisely planned foreign language course provides for drills and exercises to ensure that spelling in mastered. Fortunately these are readily converted into games.

A few general principles are worth observing.

A lot depends on the visual image of the whole word, which tends to be photographed on the memory. Thus the visual image should never, if we can avoid it, be an incorrect one. Do not write up misspellings on the board and do not allow a misspell word any pupil has written there to remain – rub it out. Refrain also from giving the class words of which the letters have been put in the wrong order. They can only sort them out correctly if they know how to spell the word, and in the process of trying to do so are likely to be confused by several incorrect versions.

Spelling games ought not to be played as if they were only tests. Every spelling game should include or follow a period of study – of the words used in the game.

Words are best introduced to the class in the context of sentences. To focus on the spelling, it is necessary to list them out of context now and then, but not for long. Words like their and there, wait and weight, should always be put into a phrase.

 There is point in including words, which the class in general can spell easily.

Spelling exercises and games are not so much needed at an elementary stage, when the learners have seen relatively few words, as later, when they may have seen many. A brief spelling game twice a week (if there are several weekly lesson periods) is probably enough, but a hard-and-fast rule cannot be laid down.

The ability to write the word is the main thing. The first writing is the copying from the board or book of short and fully meaningful sentences, with the meaning of which the learners have become familiar in oral communication. There is no reason to spell these out orally.

If the foreign language alphabet is the same as the mother tongue alphabet, the letter names need not be taught until writing is well under way. It is another matter if the foreign language alphabet is an entirely different one. Then we must give handwriting instruction, and the learners might as well meet with the letter names along with the new letters themselves. But even then there should not be a divorce of what is visually learnt from what has been learnt orally. These new and strange letters make up the sort sentences the learners have already been speaking, and can be ‘found’, with the teacher’s help, in the visual forms of such sentences.

There are some examples on spelling games.

Filling the gaps

Level: elementary

Age: young children

Group size: whole class or groups

Every learner has a number of cards, each bearing a letter clearly visible anywhere in the room. Each team can have cards of one colour, different from the other teams’ colours. The letters which occur most often in printed English are e, a, t, o, i, s, h, d, l, and r, and each learner should have plenty of these; nobody should be given only letters of low frequency.

 Think of a word (not too short) and ask for certain of the letters in it. Place the learners who have these letters in order, but leave gaps for the letters missing. The class has to guess the word and those with the missing letters then come forward to fill the gaps. Thus if the letters provided are i, r, and one f, and the correct guess giraffe is made, the teacher says Yes, good, it is giraffe, and shows a picture of one. Now, what is the first letter? Right, ‘G’. Who has a ‘G’? Harry, you were first. Come here. Where are you going to stand? All right. What is the next letter? Is it ‘A’? No, ‘A’ doesn’t come next. Where does ‘A’ come? Yes, Peter, stand next to ‘F’, and so on. The letters are not necessarily taken in sequence.

Word-completion

Level: elementary and intermediate

Age: children (possibly also adults)

Group size: whole class, teams, groups

A number of incomplete words, either in sentences or with simple ‘clue’ attached to them, e. g. a be---r (begs), are on the board. The pupils complete them on paper and if the teacher doubts their ability to do so without mistakes he allows them the consult the textbook or dictionary. The first to finish helps other members of his group or team. A limited time is allowed.

Even if the completion is made orally, it is helpful to write the words as well.

Wolves and lambs

Level:elementary and intermediate

Age: young children

Group size: pairs, groups, or whole class

The teams or groups sit in circles well apart from each other, and are visited by ‘wolves’ (or ‘tigers’ or ‘lions’ or some other animal if you like) from other teams. Each ‘wolf’ has a list of words to be spelt, and fear is shown as he approaches. Anyone who cannot spell the word the ‘wolf’ gives him has to stand aside as a captive ‘lamb’. After a short time the ‘shepherd’ (the teacher) chases the ‘wolves’ away and they take their ‘captives’ back to their own groups. The team with the most ‘captives’ is the winner.

Pictures

Level: elementary

Age: children

Group size: individuals and groups

Collect especially (for spelling and reading games) pictures of objects, people, and activities the class has been talking about. Paste them on cards, leaving room underneath for phrase or a short sentence.

Reading is chiefly a matter of reading whole words, phrases, and sentences (i. e. of understanding them in print), while spelling is chiefly a matter of writing letters in the usual order. Give the learners a stock of letter-cards and let them make words to suit the pictures. Under the picture of a house, for example, they should build up the phrase a ‘house’ or ‘This is a house’, under a picture of a man or woman jumping either ‘jumping’ or perhaps ‘John/Barbara is jumping’.

Stop

Level: intermediate

Age:any (except young children)

Group size: whole class, teams, or groups

Somebody thinks of a word and indicates the number of letters in it by means of dashes on the board. The others each guess, asking such questions as Is there a ‘T’ in it? If there is, the letter ‘T’ is put in its correct place in the word. Is there a ‘B’? And so on.

 If the letter suggested be not in the word, it is written at the side of the board and crossed out. Thus, if the thought of were table, an ‘S’ would be written at the side as ‘S’. At the same time the first line of the sign is drawn – it can be completed in exactly ten lines. Every time a wrong letter is suggested, a line is added to this drawing. When the STOP sign is complete, the team or group concerned has to stop playing. The last survivor wins the game.

It may be necessary to explain the procedure beforehand in the mother tongue.

Pattern puzzle

Level: intermediate and advanced

Age:any

Group size:groups, individuals

Each group is given a card bearing a letter-pattern, the same on each, as in the example here. The players each write down on paper all the words they can think of containing some or all of these letters, provided that the middle letter appears in each one. No letter should be used more than once in any word. There is a time limit. The group with most words is the winner.

Sentence relay

Level: intermediate and advanced

Age: children

Group size: whole class

At a leader’s signal the first in each team runs to the board and writes a word, then back to his team, handing the chalk to the second player, who does likewise, and so on. The aim is to write a complete sentence, which must not come to an end until all the members of the team have written one word each. If a word is misspelt or illegible, it is rubbed out at once.

The words may be added either in front of or after what is already on the board.