Mar 24, 2015

Rhythm oral circle game

Materials

Name tags (recommended)

Instructions

The pedagogical goal of this game is to get the students to practice saying certain new vocabulary words. It works best for things that are closed sets - numbers, days of the week, months - and which match the numbers of the class.

The game itself is played in a circle. The goal is to not get 'out' which happens if you mess up and fall outside of the rhythm of the game. Everyone in the group should stand and clap or chant a 'chorus' phrase to a pretty basic rhythm. The chorus phrase is best as something culturally appropriate, so in Arabic I use the phrase 'yalla' 'let's go!', but the way I learned this game originally was as an ice-breaker game used to learn names, with the very silly chorus phrase "big booty" repeated three times. 

Everyone in the playing group should be assigned a vocabulary word as their 'name' - it can help to write this on a nametag and put it on their shoulder. Each 'turn' of the game goes like this - this is an example for an English language class, with chorus phrase 'yeah!'):
Person 1 (with label "Monday"): Yeah yeah yeah, Monday Thursday
Person 2 (with label "Thursday"): Yeah yeah yeah, Thursday Saturday
Person 3 (with label "Saturday"): Yeah yeah yeah, Saturday [name of another day of the week]

Players MUST say their label first, then the name of the person who they want to go next.

If a player messes up (doesn't say their own day of the week, falls out of the rhythm, says the label of someone who is out, etc) they are 'out' and stand back from the group, though they should keep clapping and helping keep the energy high. As the number of players dwindles, you should encourage them to up the rhythm. You can also forbid them from going in a circle or from sending the game back to the person who called them.

You can play this with the whole class, but it's best in smaller groups of 5-8.

Filibuster

Someone shared this game with me right as there was a series of high profile political filibusters, but it's a good game at any time.

The idea is for the students, taking turns but judged as a class, to continuously speak as long as possible. The best incentive is to offer them a delay, or even a break from, planned activities in class which they do not enjoy.

Start by announcing that you had an activity planned, and wait for their groans. Offer them the option of filibustering: so long as they continue speaking (in turn) in the target language, you won't move on to that activity. One student will go as long as they can, and the student next to them will pick up the thread. The filibuster ends when they mess up, depending on criteria appropriate to their level. Suggested criteria for ending the game are:
  1. Repetition of the same stretch of speech
  2. Use of the L1
  3. Hemming and hawing
  4. Not making sense
  5. Not using complete sentences
  6. Specific mispronunciations