Bring the flag home to "Shhh" !!

If you want to wake up your class or need a sudden boost of learning motivation, you can always play this very easy physically active game that could be adapted to many lessons. Your lesson just needs to have categories that students have to choose from.

This is a variation of "Capture the Flag", where the class is divided into two teams, with each side containing a paired opponent with someone on the other team. So, you would assign a number for each student in Team A, and then assign the same numbers for each student in Team B, so that each student would have a direct opponent on the other team. In each round, the teacher calls out a number, and the students with the corresponding number come up to the floor and try to capture the flag and bring it to a base without being touched by the opponent. The flag is an item in a drawn island in the middle of the floor, and the bases are different islands drawn around the periphery of the floor. Depending on your lesson, each of the peripheral islands will have a certain category written in it. When the teacher yells out a number, he/she also yells out a word/phrase which belongs to one of the categories; the goal is for the student to bring the flag to that category by holding the flag and stepping into the island of the appropriate category. If the student manages to do so without getting touched, his/her team gets two points; if a student manages to touch the opponent holding a flag before he/she reaches an island, his/her team gets one point. The idea is to give a stronger incentive for students to capture the flag, instead of passively just wanting to tag the opponent.

In this intermediate adult class, I used this game for a lesson on pronunciation/phonetics. Students were learning how to distinguish between several similar sounds, including /ʃ/, /tʃ/, /ʒ/, /dʒ/, /z/, /s/, /θ/, /ð/, and so I thought this was a perfect game that was both exciting as well as forced the students to think and assess quickly. Each of the peripheral islands on the floor contains one of each of these sounds. So first I say a word containing one of these sounds, and then I call out one number, and the showdown begins between the paired students with that number. They get up from their seat, and start hovering around the flag like prudent predators. It is hilarious watching students trying to capture the flag while trying to avoid being touched by the opponent!

Sometimes, to make it more challenging, I would announce more numbers as the round went on, to throw more students into the arena, and we'd all watch in suspense. The rule though is that one may only tag a person with the same number. And what's the big finale? I call all the numbers at once, of course!