When designing classroom games/activities, I always try to create a good optimal mix of language-practice-opportunity, critical thinking, and of course, fun and excitement. The game should have a clear objective which induces students to become intrigued and try hard to win. For adults, I try to incorporate problem-solving and reasoning in games.
Yesterday, I had an adult class, intermediate level. The lesson was on jobs and personal characteristics suitable for certain jobs. I created a game of Guess Who? for jobs, to be played in the last half hour of class. The students were so into the game and all were equally involved. Too bad we didn't leave a whole hour to play because we had way too little time and we only got to go through two rounds!
Here's how the game works:
The class is split into equal-sized teams. I had 3 teams - two teams of 3 and one of 4. For each round, a member from each team comes up to sit at the front, facing the class, in a panel of job-people. Each of the job-people are given a job. Here are the job cards:
They keep their jobs secret from the rest of the class. The goal for each team is to be the first one to guess all three people's jobs. All three have to be guessed correctly, otherwise, they don't win.
To be able to guess properly, teams have a choice of purchasing any one of the following products on their turn.
Products:
Yes/No Question - $1,000
Wh-Question - $2,000
Wh-Question (Private) - $3,000
Make a guess - $1,000
Pass turn - $1,000
Each team starts with $20,000. Beginning with the first team, a choice is made. If they purchase a yes/no question, they may pay $1,000 to make a Yes/No question to the panel of job-people. For example: "Do you wear a uniform?" Then, each job-person gives their answer one by one. A wh-question allows you to make any short/long answer question with a Wh-question word, such as "Where do you work?" to the whole panel. Of course, the question "What is your job?" is not allowed. A private wh-question allows a team to privately ask a question by writing to one job-person, who answers back by writing. This gives the advantage of the other teams not being able to retrieve that particular clue. This would be strategic if there is a job that seems particularly difficult to guess, and a team may gain headway if they know exactly what kind of question to ask which may provide insights.
Each team takes their turn one by one. Teams record the clues as the job-people give them out. When a team is ready to make a guess, they must wait their turn to "Make a guess". They pay $1,000 and they bet a certain amount of money (which has to be within the balance of the money they have left in their account). They show me their guesses. If all three jobs are correct, they win the money they bet. If at least one is wrong, they lose the money they bet. I let them know how many they have wrong, but not which ones. After a team guesses correctly all three, the round is over, and we start a new round with different panel members, and the next team takes the first turn.
The game was very fun and all the students were focused and in their investigation modes. They discussed between each other which questions were best to ask. The panel members also had fun and tactically and smartly provided their clues. Among some questions asked were "What do you make?", "Do you make a lot of money?", "What qualities do you need for your job?", "Who do you work with?". Some answers were funny too. For the question "Are you the boss?", one member who was a judge answered "Yes. A very big boss."
I will definitely repeat this game for practice about jobs, and this time, I will a lot more time to play!
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