The Hot seat game is SO simple but they LOVE it. It's great because it's so easily adapted for different levels.

Also along the same lines Taboo works incredibly well and again can be easily adjusted.

20 questions is really popular..particularly after a few rounds when they start asking really well thought out questions to gain useful information... instead of just "is it air? Is it the sky?" and wasting them all haha.

Basically any game I put my students into teams for and pit them against each other works a charm. These games are all like my bread and butter...I've made loads of bomb games and more specific ones but I use these ones often and they've always gone down really well.

Snake- I call it Word Connection

But basically, I give 2 random words, like: TRAIN and HANDSOME

and they have match the words, using other words.
for my lower level kids, i tell them any words
for me higher level kids, i specify - VERBS or ANIMALS or COLORS
at first, i start easy like 4 words, and then work my way up to something like 6 words: 2 verbs, 2 adjectives, 2 nouns

EXAMPLE:

TRain
  u
  N eveR
          o
          o
HandsoMe

i didn't think much of the game at first, but even my completely dead middle school grade 3 students were into it after the first round

Quote from: DanaPaige on August 29, 2017, 03:29:07 PM

Snake- I call it Word Connection

But basically, I give 2 random words, like: TRAIN and HANDSOME

and they have match the words, using other words.
for my lower level kids, i tell them any words
for me higher level kids, i specify - VERBS or ANIMALS or COLORS
at first, i start easy like 4 words, and then work my way up to something like 6 words: 2 verbs, 2 adjectives, 2 nouns

EXAMPLE:

TRain
  u
  N eveR
          o
          o
HandsoMe

i didn't think much of the game at first, but even my completely dead middle school grade 3 students were into it after the first round

Thanks DanaPage! This sounds like a great game, I really want to try it out, but I'm trying to figure out the logistics. Do you play with groups? Do you time them? Also, do you give them points? Please let me know :)

Here's my PPT~
I usually play with groups- depends on the size and their level, but I tend to let 4-6 in a group. You can choose based on their ability/ class size. (Other questions are answered in the PPT) You should change "the winning team gets--" slide to however you reward your kids. For me one school gets candy, the other gets a school point.

Also, one thing that came up- Example, group 1 and 2 raised their hands. group 1 is faster, so i check group 1 answers first, but they were wrong. so i go to group 2- but as i was checking group 1's answers, group 2 erased their board. so group 2 has to rewrite what they wrote.

so you could tell them to not erase their boards until the point is given. but sometimes, i find over explaining things confuses them. so personally, i didn't mention it and i just told group 2 to wait, while i check group 1's answers.

ALSO
it's not quite like that korean game where they have to connect the last letter of the word.

so example:
connect TRAIN-HANDSOME, 3 words
tRain
 u
 n
 NevEr
 e    y
 r    e
       l
     hAndsome
       s
       h

this is also okay!

ALSO ALSO!
I'm obviously not great at coming up with names - so please feel free to change the title~ but if you do, please let me know what you change it to, i might want to use it too! :)

ENJOY!