Alphabetical: let's play in English in every subject

 

Shared by Mª Rosario Bullón:

1. INTRODUCTION:

Throughout the years I have been teaching English language, my students have taught me a lot of things. 

As you can imagine, in a heterogeneous class you have all kinds of students, the ones who love English and everything the teacher brings to the classroom is wonderful; also, you have the ones that there is no way to involve and motivate them in any of the English skills you practise during the class because they do not enjoy the subject at all. However, both types of students are ready for a game at any moment. So, the activity I am going to present here is a game.

2. ACTIVITY:

“Pass the word” or “The Alphabet Game” or “Alphabetical”- as British people call it (It is our “Pasapalabra”, a very famous TV contest).

3. AIM:

I usually do this activity at the end of each term to revise the vocabulary we have already learned in class. 

It turns out a great success to promote productive skills, mainly writing and speaking. 

Besides, the component of competition is very attractive for students, because it is a contest and the winner will win a prize (I keep the secret about the prize until the end of the game to motivate them. I usually buy something they can share and most of the times all of them get something.)

4. TIMING:

It takes me at least two or three sessions to carry out this activity.

5. AGE GROUP:

It could be done with any age group, but in this case, I have prepared the activity for a 1º ESO group, with 20 students.

6. MATERIALS:

A pen, a piece of paper and a lot of imagination to create definitions of words.

7. DEVELOPMENT OF THE ACTIVITY

I divide the class into four groups of five students, there are 20 students in this class. Each group has to write 6 definitions of words, beginning or containing the letters of the alphabet, for example, they write if the word begins with “A”, or if the word contains that letter. I provide them the “Z”. The students collaborate with each other.

Once they understand what they have to do, they take a pen and a paper and start working on making the questions. The teacher is around to solve any doubt they could not solve by themselves. When they finish the questionnaire, the game begins. 

They have to speak English clearly, with a good intonation to get understood. They also choose one member of the group to go to the board and put a tick if they guess the answer, a cross if they fail or they draw a square if they pass the word.

Students will be assessed by direct observation of the activity. The teacher will get to using positive language.

As you can see, I did not use any of your activities, but this one is a very good one to encourage children to speak and before speaking they have to write, so the four skills are involved, Writing, Speaking, Listening and Reading.

The first day class with a new group I usually prepare a questionnaire with a “Find someone who…” and the students love it.

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Harriet Thomson:

Given that this activity is so popular, you may want to develop a similar quiz (Blockbusters or Jeopardy) to vary the style of evaluation at the end of your units of work.