Sorry, but I’m not yet teaching in FLL so I could not do the research task.
I already mentioned my experience with the game “To pack ones bags” in class 9:
It was the daily opener for the lesson and started each day with another pupil. The class was very creative, some students had looked up their own vocabulary so they could learn from each other. For them it was real fun to chose the most absurd things to pack in! All of them where attentive and listened to the speaker while correcting him/ her silently. As I have already told in one of my comments I was really impressed by the fact that a classs of 32 pupils managed to pack the whole bag without a false answer!
I once tried a vocabuary-game with color-cards:
One student offers the cards so that the other who has to chose one card cannot see the colors. After having chosen one he asks him: “Name me something in…(this color) e.g. “yellow”. The other has to answer : e.g. “banana”. Then the cards go to the next one…
This game has the disadvantage that only two pupils are active, all others have to listen (and to think , too), but it is not easy to keep them quiet while the game is wandering through the class so I can only recommend it for small groups e.g. as a media-changing-game with illustrations.
INGA
I haven`t been teaching yet either, so I thought mostly about how to introduce a game. Some of my thoughts on this: I think we all know how difficult it is to explain a game to family/friends. It can get really confusing, especially when you mix up or forget some of the rules. Before I play my first game in the classroom I would try to explain it to a family member to improve my structure of explaining and be aware of possibe questions. It might also be helpful to write down the main rules on the board, so the pupils can read them if they forgot and won`t ask all the time during the game.
The most important point is possibly to show how much fun it is and enjoy playing with your class. 🙂
I am not teaching yet either but playing with my kids and with elderly women in a Bridge Club I learned a lot about competitive behaviour which can be rather annoying.
Therefore I would suggest to introduce games which are fun and not very competitive, rather games where the pupils have to cooperate as teams.
Introducing a game should be done with clarity, with putting down the rules in the notebook and enough time for the pupils to ask questions. There will be some who need more time than others.
Regarding the game “Activity” everyone has to be part of the guessing team but also to be at least once the “painter” or “mime” of a term.
I would love to do a research on the task for non-teachers. Being still caught in the limiting circumstances of the pandemic, however, it is impossible these days to invite friends to play games. Although, from my experience people are usually very excited and motivated at the starting point. During the game they develop individual skills in order to win, the level of activity rises remarkably and follows typical up and down movements depending on the further course of the game. Some people loose motivation as soon as they recognize that they will not win, other nevertheless remain motivated. A kind of competition usually spans the entire game. Most adults are able to deal with that quite well.
I am not a teacher yet but I am a football coach so explaining games to children is a very common situation for me. I usually explain the game once. Normally most children don’t get it at first but 1 or 2 would normally understand. Then I ask them to explain it again to their team mates. this has the advantage that firstly I can be sure that the rules were understood at least by this girl and also the girls tend to understand each other much better than me (even if I speak their mother toungue it still seems a different style of language that they speak). So by then normally several children will have understood the game, while many may still be clueless. We then start playing and the girls who don’t know what to do will look to and follow the example of their peers who know what to do. That way after a few minutes everybody learns the game by doing.
I really would like to introduce codenames in Gartenbau in class 6 using gardening topics – due to the time of the year, there are many tasks we have to attend to now, but I’m sure it’s a perfect game for winter time.
At the moment I’m taking care of classes 1 and 2 in the Notbetreuung and of classes 5-6 during after-school care. Just this week we played Heimlich & Co. which is a cooperative game without knowing who you’re helping, but is revealed in the end. I played it with 7 children from classes 1 and 2. One child came up with the idea and the others joined quickly after the saw it was being set up. They were all quite invested in playing together and the secretive momentum kept most of them intrigued until the end.
Some children were more passive, whereas others wanted to take care or charge of adding the numbers and moving the figures, etc.
As there are colors and numbers involved in every round, it’s definitely a nice game to learn the mentioned in other languages while playing and having fun.
I have some experience with teaching children in the middle school, here are some observations I’ve made:
– children enjoy playing games a lot.
– they need the rules to be explained in a fairly accessible manner (if we want to stay in the foreign language) and to be demonstrated as well.
– they usually get very occupied and excited with playing.
-they observe other participants consciously.
– usually they know the rules well, they react instantaneously if others don’t stick with the rules.
– if they are to take turns, they usually wait impatiently for their turn.
– it seems hard for them not to comment on others reactions and the course of the game.
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7 Comments
Sorry, but I’m not yet teaching in FLL so I could not do the research task.
I already mentioned my experience with the game “To pack ones bags” in class 9:
It was the daily opener for the lesson and started each day with another pupil. The class was very creative, some students had looked up their own vocabulary so they could learn from each other. For them it was real fun to chose the most absurd things to pack in! All of them where attentive and listened to the speaker while correcting him/ her silently. As I have already told in one of my comments I was really impressed by the fact that a classs of 32 pupils managed to pack the whole bag without a false answer!
I once tried a vocabuary-game with color-cards:
One student offers the cards so that the other who has to chose one card cannot see the colors. After having chosen one he asks him: “Name me something in…(this color) e.g. “yellow”. The other has to answer : e.g. “banana”. Then the cards go to the next one…
This game has the disadvantage that only two pupils are active, all others have to listen (and to think , too), but it is not easy to keep them quiet while the game is wandering through the class so I can only recommend it for small groups e.g. as a media-changing-game with illustrations.
INGA
I haven`t been teaching yet either, so I thought mostly about how to introduce a game. Some of my thoughts on this: I think we all know how difficult it is to explain a game to family/friends. It can get really confusing, especially when you mix up or forget some of the rules. Before I play my first game in the classroom I would try to explain it to a family member to improve my structure of explaining and be aware of possibe questions. It might also be helpful to write down the main rules on the board, so the pupils can read them if they forgot and won`t ask all the time during the game.
The most important point is possibly to show how much fun it is and enjoy playing with your class. 🙂
I am not teaching yet either but playing with my kids and with elderly women in a Bridge Club I learned a lot about competitive behaviour which can be rather annoying.
Therefore I would suggest to introduce games which are fun and not very competitive, rather games where the pupils have to cooperate as teams.
Introducing a game should be done with clarity, with putting down the rules in the notebook and enough time for the pupils to ask questions. There will be some who need more time than others.
Regarding the game “Activity” everyone has to be part of the guessing team but also to be at least once the “painter” or “mime” of a term.
I would love to do a research on the task for non-teachers. Being still caught in the limiting circumstances of the pandemic, however, it is impossible these days to invite friends to play games. Although, from my experience people are usually very excited and motivated at the starting point. During the game they develop individual skills in order to win, the level of activity rises remarkably and follows typical up and down movements depending on the further course of the game. Some people loose motivation as soon as they recognize that they will not win, other nevertheless remain motivated. A kind of competition usually spans the entire game. Most adults are able to deal with that quite well.
I am not a teacher yet but I am a football coach so explaining games to children is a very common situation for me. I usually explain the game once. Normally most children don’t get it at first but 1 or 2 would normally understand. Then I ask them to explain it again to their team mates. this has the advantage that firstly I can be sure that the rules were understood at least by this girl and also the girls tend to understand each other much better than me (even if I speak their mother toungue it still seems a different style of language that they speak). So by then normally several children will have understood the game, while many may still be clueless. We then start playing and the girls who don’t know what to do will look to and follow the example of their peers who know what to do. That way after a few minutes everybody learns the game by doing.
I really would like to introduce codenames in Gartenbau in class 6 using gardening topics – due to the time of the year, there are many tasks we have to attend to now, but I’m sure it’s a perfect game for winter time.
At the moment I’m taking care of classes 1 and 2 in the Notbetreuung and of classes 5-6 during after-school care. Just this week we played Heimlich & Co. which is a cooperative game without knowing who you’re helping, but is revealed in the end. I played it with 7 children from classes 1 and 2. One child came up with the idea and the others joined quickly after the saw it was being set up. They were all quite invested in playing together and the secretive momentum kept most of them intrigued until the end.
Some children were more passive, whereas others wanted to take care or charge of adding the numbers and moving the figures, etc.
As there are colors and numbers involved in every round, it’s definitely a nice game to learn the mentioned in other languages while playing and having fun.
I have some experience with teaching children in the middle school, here are some observations I’ve made:
– children enjoy playing games a lot.
– they need the rules to be explained in a fairly accessible manner (if we want to stay in the foreign language) and to be demonstrated as well.
– they usually get very occupied and excited with playing.
-they observe other participants consciously.
– usually they know the rules well, they react instantaneously if others don’t stick with the rules.
– if they are to take turns, they usually wait impatiently for their turn.
– it seems hard for them not to comment on others reactions and the course of the game.