Hail Fellow Waygookins,

So today the taboo occurred, all the computers in the school were hauled away for upgrades, so I was without a computer in all my classes. Of course this is the end of the school year and I wanted to do something fun, so I needed the computer. The desperation to get through the period led me to search for some games that do not require computers to play. I found three on the internet and I wanted to share them with you.

*Side note, don't bother trying to fill all 40 mins with these games, they're mostly filler*


5 Letter Words

How to:

• Students call out a five-letter word, eg. ‘fears’. Circle the letters that appear in your word too, and put a square around the letters that not only appear in your word but are at the right place (e, a and r in my example). The goal is to find out the teacher's word in maximum five tries (hence the name; there are going to be five lines and five columns).

- Good Words: Heart, House, Catch, Crazy, Fears, Train, Crown, Sleep, Small, Hello, Movie, Phone, Cream, Grape, Music, Water, April, Horse, Magic, Pizza


A Ship Comes Loaded

How to:

• Split the class into two teams. Let the students choose a letter randomly for example ‘A’. Now the first team is going to say words, one by one (no helping), that begins with an A until that team cannot think of words that start with A. The team gets points for every word they say. Once they cannot think of a word (5 second rule, it’s the next team’s turn).

• Start like this: say to the first student "a ship comes loaded". The student answers "with what" and you say "with apples". Then the student continues to say to the next one in his team "a ship comes loaded"...he/she answer "with what"...the student says "with apples and apes" for example.
If anyone fails to remember all the words that have been said or if he/she can´t come up with a new word, then there team’s turn is over. The team receives points for every word they come up with starting with the second word.

Street Fighter Fever

How to: Find and laminate 2 large pictures of your favorite Street fighter Characters

• Stick the two pictures on the whiteboard. Above them write 20 (or whatever total points you feel like) Divide the class in two teams, each one representing one of the characters on the board. Now ask questions or review your content. For each correct answer the team can roll a die, the number is then subtracted from the other team's points. The first team to have no points left loses.

I hope these help anyone in a similar position, of course scrabble and Uno are also great ways to pass the time in Public School limbo.

Here is another one that worked well at my camp.

Students write words on a piece of paper. I gave each pair of students an A4 sheet and had them tear it up, splitting it in half many times until each student has 8 pieces of paper. They write a word on each piece.

Then gather up the words and put them in a bag. Each student has 1 minute to pull words from the bag and describe them to the rest of their team. If the team guesses the word they keep the paper. If they can't describe it or the team can't guess then they put it back in the bag.

I did this with a small class of 12 students so I had 2 teams of 6 students each. You could have more teams or have them do it in small groups. Before they write the words they have to know how the game works so they can write things they can describe. You could also preface it with a quick review of how to describe things. My students weren't that keen on speaking when it was their turn but despite that they did a really good job.

Mr. Wolf
This is a traditional kid’s game. You also need a larger space to play it in so kids can run around. First do the Mr Wolf Song, then...

1. Practice with the kids the phrase "What time is it?"
2. Practice the responses "it's 1 o'clock" "2 o'clock" etc. (they should know it from the song by now)
3. Introduce the name of the game. This gives a chance to introduce the cultural point of "Mr ...." (as a formal title)
4. All the kids line up against one wall of the room.
 
5. One kid is selected as Mr.Wolf who then walks to the middle of the room.
6. The student’s objective is to reach the far wall while Mr.Wolf's objective is to eat the other kids.
7. The kids shout out "What time is it Mr. Wolf?" in a big, huge voice.
8. Mr.Wolf then shouts back the time. The time can be anything from 1 to 12 o'clock.e.g. "It's seven o'clock"
9. The kids then take the corresponding number of steps forward. For example 3 steps for 3 o'clock.
7. Repeat from step 7.
8. When Mr. Wolf decides that the other kids have got near enough the far wall (really his house) then instead of saying "it's ..... o'clock" he says "It's Dinner Time!".
9. All the kids then run back towards the wall they came from. But if Mr Wolf tigs (touches) them before they reach the wall then they become the new Mr Wolf!
10. Play Again!

2 Truths and a Lie
Instructions
1.   Each person will get a slip of paper. Then everyone must write down three statements about themselves. Two of the statements should be true and one of them should be a lie.
2.   Select a person to go first. That person should read aloud their three statements. Then, conduct voting by having the person read their statements again, asking for a show of hands among the group as to which statement they think is a lie.
3.   Ask the person to reveal the correct answer. The people who guessed correctly should mark a tally on their sheets for a correct guess.
4.   Continue around the room, having each person read his statement and then conducting a vote. Participants should continue marking down each time they make a correct guess.
5.   Ask everyone how many correct guesses they had once everyone has read their statements. The person with the most correct guesses at the end has won the game.


Both games worked really well for me - the kids loved it and it took up the entire class.
20 minutes each game = 40 minutes

Vocabulary games or activities that don't need technology

1.Hangman

2.Bingo

3.Charades

4.Dictation

5.Unscramble

6.Word search

7.Memory matching game

8.Target word game


9.Build words e.g Prcfete (Perfect, fete, pet, erect, crete)

10.Crossword puzzles

11.Story word search (give students a story/newspaper clip and dictate words for them to find in the story or give them a list of words to find in the story.

12.Reading a story – for pronunciation (combine with story word search)

Thank you for sharing, these games are great! You never know when technology might crap out on you one day! ;)

One that I like, the students love and that requires nothing is this like timebomb game. Been floating around for a while, but might as well post it if someone hasn't heard of it.

Just get a stuffed animal, ball or make one (tape and crumpled up paper) and give it to a student. They throw it from student to student for a set period of time and then you say "Bang!". That student must answer a question related to whatever you went over in class such as, "How was your vacation?" or "What will you do this weekend?". Make sure students don't beam other students with the ball and I've also banned passing it back to the person who passed it to you. Just predetermine a random amount of time, give them the ball, say go, watch the clock, and say boom at the appropriate time.

A game I find my higher level kids enjoy is Murder Mystery.  It's like reverse Cluedo - you give them the victim, the weapon and where it happened.  They then have to write a story about what they think happened and who the murderer is.  We write the story up on the whiteboard as they tell it.  I have had some very interesting results!

My students love the street fighter game. Thank you for the great idea!

These are all great.
Another one I have used is the game taboo, which most people know. But when ur pc is out u can have the class divide into 2 teams. U write a word on the board and they have to explain it to the person in their team who is facing away from the board. I have found that having the whole team explain gets really loud so in turns one person from each team comes up and explains their word. The next word is then a chance for another person to explain. Words well and the kids love it. It is great to get them to speak, I penalise them if they are speaking Korean

I created a fairly simple game the other day--at least I believe I created it! I made basketball hoop out of paper (nothing fancy) and taped it to the wall. Then I created "get to know you" question cards and rolled them into balls. If students missed the shot they had to answer the question. If they got it in then their opponent had to answer the question. It worked really well. Usually the boys keep their sentences short, but I learned a lot about them through this game and they actually made an effort since it was competitive.

Some questions I asked were:

Do you believe in love?
What animal do you look like?
If you were immortal for a day what would you do?
Yo! What's up?

This game is easily adaptable to any age group. The only problem is, I've only done this with a few students at once so I'm not sure how it would work for a larger class.