Materials and equipment needed

The game you choose to play with your young learners may also depend on the materials required. Time, availability and cost will probably be major considerations in your choice as will the effort of organising children's groups and the storage of the materials.

Pencil and paper games

Other games, such as "The Shark Game", which we saw Raymond playing earlier, or "The Dog Game" are pencil and paper games, which can often be demonstrated/presented to the whole class using the board.

In "The Dog Game" you write a word on the board, e.g. dog. Then you elicit a word beginning with each of the letters from the class - remember how we did this with the words SONGS and GAMES in this unit?

You or individual children can write the words next to each letter. You can then ask your children to take out a piece of paper and you can dictate words to them, or write words on the board for the children to copy. Then let the children work in pairs to see how many of the word puzzles they can finish.

You can also play the "Word Chain" game from the start of the First steps unit as a board game or pencil and paper game.

Watch Raymond as he plays The Word Chain game on the subject of food. There are some amusing suggestions from the class as to what would qualify as food!

The Word Chain game

Card games

In "Snap" you need cards with single words or pictures written on them. There should be four or five cards with the same word/picture and a total of 50/60 cards per group of four/six. The cards are dealt out randomly to all the players in the group.

They are dealt face down and the players hold them face down. In turn, each player turns a card and places it in front of him/her to form his/her own pile. When the cards at the top of the two piles are the same, any member of the group can call "Snap!" The first player to do so collects in those two piles. The winner is the player who collects all the cards.

Materials-free games

"I Spy" is a game which relies on talk and listening and does not need any materials.

The first player stands at the front, silently chooses a visible object in the classroom, and says, "I spy with my little eye something beginning with _____ (initial letter)".

The other children in the class raise their hands to offer suggestions (the player at the front of the class selects one at a time), e.g. "Is it a ...? Yes, it is./No, it isn't a ...". Whoever guesses correctly changes places with the player at the front and declares, "I spy with my little eye ...", and the game goes on.

These are just a few of the types of games you can play with your young learners.

For further practical ideas refer to Vale, D. & Feunteun, A. (1995), Teaching Children English, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, pp. 262-266.

Three other sources you might like to look at are:

· Cant, A. & Superfine, W. (1997), Developing Resources for Primary, London: Richmond Publishing

· Toth, M. (1995), Children's Games, Great Britain: Heinemann English Language Teaching

· Paul, D. (1996), Songs and Games for Children, Great Britain: Heinemann English Language Teaching.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 789