Alphabug soup - There's a fly in my soup!

s...s... soup!

I was looking for an open ended vocabulary game to test some of my YLE students when I stumbled upon “Alphabug Soup”, which was tucked away in our vast boardgames cupboard, right next to the gateway to Narnia.

The essence of the game is to get your critters around the board, and back into your soup pot, by naming words that begin with the letter displayed on the letter disks that you pick up after rolling the die. The aim of the game is to collect as many disks as possible, NOT get around the board as quickly as possible. Repeated words are strictly forbidden!

Rather than focusing on a specific vocabulary set, this game provides the students with freedom to choose their own words. I was especially pleased when “Union Jack” was uttered during game play! The game also helps clear up some common mistakes with words beginning with "l" or "r" and "b" or "v". One of my classes was struggling with differentiating between b and d, the competitive aspect of the game soon straightened out those errors.

I’ve also experiment with some variations to the game and upping the difficulty. Instead of only picking up 1 letter disk per turn, players pick up the amount of letter disks as shown on the die face, moving forward 1 space for each correct answer. For hard mode, the number you roll is the number of words you must say beginning with the letter shown on your chosen disk.

“Alphabug Soup” is fun, versatile and basic enough to suit classes of ranging abilities, whilst allowing for a broader range of vocabulary to come into use. The students also don’t seem to mind the collections of critters bobbing away in their soup pots!

Buy one, get one free - boardgames flipping the classroom

For us adults, having to go grocery shopping can be a bit of a tiresome chore. If you are forgetful like me, you will have to make a list, check it twice and then remember to take it with you when you go to the shops! At Luna we have turned grocery shopping into a fun activity which the students can enjoy with the help of the "Shopping List" game. If only I could do my grocery shopping in the classroom!

Shopping carts and shopping lists

The students get their own shopping list, made up of 8 different items, and their own shopping trolley, which they must fill up with the items on their shopping list. There are cards, which are placed face down, for each of the food items found on the shopping lists and it is the students' job to find and name all the food items on their shopping list. It's a great way of introducing new food items that the students unfamiliar with, as well as allowing them to recycle language they have encountered in their textbooks.

Is it on the shopping list?

We all know that food vocabulary is an integral part of learning any language, especially if you don't want to unwittingly order a plateful of tripe or a bowl full of fish eyes at a restaurant! The great thing about the "shopping list" game is that as well as building the students' vocabulary of food items, alongside incorporating the target language you have been teaching in the classroom. You can elicit what the students' favourite foods are, what they could make from the items on their shopping lists or even get the students to make shopping lists of their own! Another way to implement this game in the classroom is to set up a role play activity where the students take on the roles of a cashier and a customer. So why not give the game a go in your classroom with your very own twist!

No it isn't!

Only if the students would get this excited when their parents take them grocery shopping!

Damian Gowland

Leading a horse to water; how to make it drink?

After a month or so of "I don't know", "I guess", "Yeah", "Maybe" & "Not really" responses to just about everything we have tried, Damian & I have been scratching our heads & thinking outside the box for this class, considering a project-based approach. Our learner is far too cool for school, and his English far too good for a traditional approach...plus we know he will start yawning & pull his hoodie back up as soon as we revert to type & try to start teaching. A follow up to an in-class brain-storming activity never got off the ground because the written product was so utterly bizarre I did not know where to pick up...man-eating carrots, flying volcanic robots & reincarnation. My efforts to flesh out the narrative had us going in ever-tightening circles of teen logic & reticence.

Clearly this kid plays way to many games. A Placement Test we rely on had given us our first 'false' reading (I think) in that he was about 2 CEFR levels below where we had pencilled him, so we are still trying to establish a baseline level we can work from. OK. Writing didn't quite work out, so let's see what we can do about a vocabulary exploration.

Word Up the tool of choice here, expecting a short 'it's too hard/boring' after 20 minutes...but no. "Can I use a dictionary" and "I'm gonna loose if I just use 3-letter words, aren't I?" revelations. Uncovered a will to win/compete with people (not just programmes) and thinking about strategy - as well as accepting tips/hints to do better (after outright rejection at first - couple of big scores from me vs 'dog' did the trick!).

So, introspective reluctant learner wants to win - games - and has an impressive vocabulary. Dislikes traditional classroom approach but mum wants him to be given essays for homework! Gamification might be an answer; I have seen a few presentations now of using games for courses, but I'm not a gamer myself...I really doubt I could become a Minecraft ninja in a hurry and build this into a strategy. Likewise, I have no interest in descending into the depths of Second Life and all the escapist/obsessive traits that seems to bring out in people. Last thing we really want to do is loose this learner into an even deeper layer of withdrawal from us! Not that we can play crossword games every week either (fun though that would be for me!).

Conundrum. Any suggestions, fellow teachers?

We're engaged!

There's a really nice review game towards the end of "Sounds Fun 1" which our young learners have a lot of fun playing - nothing scary like words involved (to read).

In a digital era (and I am a big fan of web 2.0 and plugged in classrooms) it is nice to get retro with dice & erasers for counters! A personal philosophy is to get out of the way as much as possible - set up the activity and retreat, help out if necessary (and when asked properly!) and monitor.

Another thing I think is very important (and often missing) in kids' classes is the questioning role. Kids are asking questions incessantly in their native tongue, aren't they?! Just as important to be able to do so in English - and of their peers as much as of their teacher. In this case, asking teacher was a last resort. And as a last resort, I got to find out which vocab had gone in, and what hadn't. The nice aspect to this game is the likelihood of repetition, so players get the chance to remember for themselves/prompt each other/slag each other off if they have forgotten the same word three times over!

As you can see, the students are fully engaged with each other (actually demanding each other to hurry up & ask the question do they can answer 'their turn') and having a lot of learning fun. Student centred, loads of interaction, meaningful...

Use the same game template with your vocab, I am sure your students will enjoy!

Swearing in the classroom

One of those grey corners of the EFL classroom for sure.

Under our table seemed like a very appropriate location to address the issue of 'bad' language - we were taking a time out from our planned activities anyway.

To be honest, I actually feel it is quite an accomplishment as a teacher to marshall coarse language. It is a very common feature of everyday discourse, and to suggest that it isn't is to ignore a very large elephant in the room! I actually feel quite proud when my students can let a suitable four letter word go without it clattering around dangerously.

Birthplace of fruity language?

Now I do not think teachers should set out to actually teach Anglo-Saxon unpleasantries; I doubt few do. More often than not, an adventurous student will experiment with something they heard in the street or playground, pub or TV. Then the teacher needs to use a lot of sensitivity to assess on the spot how to respond...cordon the word off with "Do not break the glass" kind if warning label? Let it go? Take offense? Put it aside & tackle it later (important if you need to find guidance on school policy/keep your job).

The fact that my students and I all selected the very same word from a large and active vocabulary in the same second or two suggests to me we got the balance right.

There were only three more earthquakes during the rest of our lesson, so the challenge was to use different expletives but only if we were under the table! Our trigger event had been a mere M3 - but the epicenter was a shallow half a mile away. Ironic, as at the time I was pulling their legs about enjoying the longest life expectancy in the industrialized world & asking them what they were going to do to save the planet.

While we checked the USGS website & Japanese Met Office for the seismic skinny, it was agreed that I swore loudest but last, as they were already under the table. Score draw?!

It has taken me 20+ years teaching to be comfortable with swearing students, so a few words of caution. Don't go there unless you have to, and even then make sure you know all the parameters of your job description. And make sure the broader picture (the rest of your class) will be OK with where you go on this touchy subject. Whatever you do, don't use bad language yourself  in class.

Context is everything!

How to milk a pirate

Another extensive reading project got a bit intensive in class today!

My lads had read/listened to the accompanying CD narration of the story for homework, and been asked to tackle some of the challenges from the workbook to get into the nitty-gritty of the story.

We played the "Ping the next word" game I described last week, and patently obvious who had paid more attention at home than the rest. Well done Takuro.
That got us refreshed with the storyline & characters, blew away the after-school cobwebs.

Vocab mining: I asked the students to find how many times they could find the word 'pirate' or 'pirates'  in the book. Not a high usage word you may very well argue (and I'd agree - Matsumoto is in the middle of a landlocked prefecture!) but it does crop up with persistent regularity in C.ESOL Young Learners exams...good to know?! And it was a new word for them - 'say' it when you see it. Which worked out at thirteen times each. A drill, perchance?

Grammar decoding: I asked students to underline all the action words they could find with an 's' on the end with a blue pencil (no special significance with the colour!). Pirates? No. Looks? Yes. Says? Yes. Quickly figure out what is a verb and what is not ("Can you pirate?"). Next, we looked together for action words without an 's' on the end & underlined them in another colour (red, as you ask). Similar number, often the same word. How does that work then? Good suggestions (in Japanese was OK - I only know the right words so all the other ideas get a frown!) until we narrowed it down to the word or words before the verb. Aha. The he/she/it thing.

Stick your tongue out & colour it: Finding voiced & unvoiced /th/ sounds (as a review - we have discovered this frothy pair of sounds in our phonics work lately). I HATE katakana and the myriad bad habits it insists Japanese learners are strangled with (there are no /th/ phonemes). Students tasked to find every /th/ sound and circle them either pink (unvoiced) or orange (voiced). Again, say the sounds to check them - 'imaginary' sounds in your head have no voice/teeth/tongue or lips involved do they? And ever so hard to monitor. Altogether, 46 'the/they/them' and a slippery single 'thank'. A lot of practice and a penny dropping about just how frequent this sound occurs!