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.