Skills Focus: Reading

Location: Computer room (multiple computers)

Game: Rizzoli and Isles

If I ever ask teachers if there’s a game that they would want to use in class that’s based on a specific theme the most common answer is crime or a detective based game – so here’s one right here.  There’s even a nice little tutorial at the beginning which your learners can read.  It tells you how to play the game.  Here’s the first one:

 It’s basically a point and click game – you point your mouse on various parts of the screen and click to see if you get some information in your role as a detective.

Note it is a homicide you are investigating so be aware there are some scenes that are inappropriate for a younger audience.  For instance, you have to view the scene of the crime and so you not only get to see the murder victim but you have to collect evidence from the body.  However, if you’d like to judge this game for yourself and see the content of the game you can always take a look at the video walkthrough that is at the bottom of this post.

The screen shots here are all taken from the tutorial at the beginning of the game.  This will not only give you an idea of the level of language in the game but will also give you an idea of what to expect in the game.  Of course, these will all be read by your learners too.

To orientate learners towards the game I took some of the language items from the tutorial and got them to do a little bit of dictionary detective work and find out their meanings.  Basically, it was way to preteaching some of the game’s vocabulary, orientate learners towards the language task (we switched to an online dictionary) and introduce the game itself via the tutorial.

Here’s the vocabulary we did before the game:

There’s a bit of jumping about in this game.  As you solve clues and progress, different locations become available to you.  You start at the crime scene where you collect evidence and talk to the police officers on the crime scene and the building supervisor who’s office is next door.  I say talk but what you in fact do is read what they say, choose from a short list what you say and see where that takes you in the conversation.  A little simple but, hey!  It is reading practice.

While you do move around a few different locations you do have to keep going back to your office.  Your office is not only the place where you collect all your evidence, arrange it and make connections but there’s also the forensic department which you have to go and talk to.

Your notice board (pictured above) is a click away from your desk and you drag and drop the evidence you collect onto it and, as the game progresses, continue to move them around so that they begin to join up.  This in turn gives you more ideas on where to look and impresses your boss so that they can direct you to more locations and more clues.

I have to admit having played the game myself with a class this moving clues around the notice board can prove a little tiresome and it’s a good idea to have the video walkthrough on hand to give learners a little bit of extra help.  Either go and have a look yourself and call out what they need to do next and invite them to go up and have a look at it.  I generally don’t let them have too easy an access to the walkthrough (like on their computer in a different window) as they tend to overuse it.

I think I’ve already mentioned the desk, haven’t I? I also mentioned the bulletin board but reading back on this blog post I’ve called it a notice board.  I made this mistake in class and it did create a little bit of confusion but strangely enough generated some quite spontaneous and natural English.  Basically I got told off by my students, got involved in a semantical arguement which even if I didn’t really win I felt that by getting so much language out of them was a victory in itself.

Notice how ‘bulletin board’ is on my preteach vocabulary list (above).  Yep!  I learnt my lesson and by the time I got round to using the game with another class I was calling it ‘the bulletin board’.  However, I did feel that by skipping over calling it a ‘notice board’ we were missing out so subsequently I threw it back in and, you’ll be glad to hear, feel much better.  I have, rather unfortunately, never had that same level of “discussion” as I had the first time.  I feel rather nostalgic about it now.

Anyway, I’m waffling.  Either play the game yourself or watch the video walkthrough.  Here’s the link to watch it:

Rizzoli and Isles

Last week, I had the pleasure of talking to a group of teachers that Shelly Terrell was training in Brazil. I answered questions about using computer games in the classroom and introduced them to the Digital Play blog and book.

Hope you enjoy the video!

Location: Connected Classroom

Language Focus: 3rd Conditional

Skills Focus: Reading, Speaking

Game: An Interactive Story

Can you help the girl get home through the woods before it gets dark?

This is a nice little game presented as a moving story book.  That is, it looks like a book upon which the drawings of the characters move.  ok, they move in a limited way but it’s got text for reading practice and it looks kind of cute.  At the beginning of the game you get a bit of the background story and some information on what you have to do.  A few pages into the story the game starts in earnest as the girl meets a strange creature and has to decide how to react.  This is where you the reader get to choose what the character does and in effect dictate the course of the story.  I did this on an interactive whiteboard allowing time on each page for my learners to read the story, discuss any difficult language elements, answer some questions (sort of spontaneous comprehension questions) and finally talk about and reach a consensus on what course of action to take in the story.

Preparation

I played the game first and prepared a set of questions to ask my learners.  Having played the game I realised that by asking certain questions I could ‘guide’ my class to make the choices that would bring out the more interesting elements of the story (it was also the longest version).  Here are those questions:

• What time of year does the story take place?
• Where was she going?
• What was the matter with the strange creature?
• What do you think would have happened if you hadn’t stopped to help?
• Why do you think it’s a bad idea to stop and play in the park?
• What would have happened if you had stopped?
• What does the old man drop?
• What reward does he give her for returning his wallet?
• What would have happened if she’s kept it?
• What does the girl get if she arrives late?
• What does the girl get when she arrives just in time?
• What does the girl do after dinner?

Pre-play

Play

Post Play

The workshop, facilitated by Paul Braddock and Graham Stanley is one of a number of similar workshops that have been organised for the annual TESOL Electronic Village Online (EVO).

Over the next 5 weeks, participants will be working together and sharing ideas about using games in language teaching. The workshop, run on Moodle, and which will be archived on the TLLG wiki, also features a series of live sessions with special guest speakers talking about different aspects of games and gamification in language teaching and learning:

• Joe Pereira
• Ozge Karaoglü
• Kyle Mawer
• Rob Lewis

In addition, participants will:-

• be given two special booklets with ideas, tips and lesson plans on how to use online games in class
• have the opportunity to take part in a special Teacher Development online game

This is the second free online games workshop that Digital Play has been involved in. The first, run in December 2011 for SEETA (South East Europe Teachers Association) is still available for visits and tasks (see below).

Here, as the last Digital Play blog post of the year, is Nada’s idea for the December Escape Game. Well done Nada! A copy of Digital Play (the book) is on the way to you.

December Escape Game Lesson Plan

Level: Beginners
Language: body parts, furniture, prepositions of place
Function: asking questions (to be)
Skills: speaking
Location: the connected classroom
Game: December Escape Game

Pre-play
Revise vocabulary by labelling body parts and furniture (December Escape Game YLE Worksheet).

Play
Tell your students that Santa has to deliver the presents but has been locked in the room. On top of that, he is missing his clothes. They are to help him find his clothes, find the key and escape the room. There are some things hidden in the room and students’ task is to guide the teacher where to click by asking:  ‘’Is there something behind/under/in… ‘’ .  Find all the missing pieces and help Santa out.

Post Play
Write a letter to Santa.

Thanks for this great idea, Nada, and thanks to all of our readers! Wishing you Seasons Greetings and looking forward to sharing more digital play with you all in 2012!

Location: Computer room

Skills Focus: Speaking

Language focus: Prepositions of place, vocabulary in a house, imperatives (look, go, pick up etc)

Game: Escape Pear Room

The premise is that you get a little bit too drunk each Christmas and the family have decided they’ve had enough and locked you in the house.  It’s up to you to figure out how to escape.

Preparation

You can watch the Escape Pear Room video walkthroughs to familiarise yourself with the game.  This will help you while you are monitoring the activity to predict ahead, input language and guide learners if they get stuck.

Preplay

1. Tell learners they are going to see 4rooms and they will have 25 seconds each to write down any words associated with Christmas that they can see.
2. Open the game and move through the four rooms allowing 25 seconds on each for learners to write down the words.
3. Feedback in open class making sure all learners know the meaning of the words they have written down.
4. Go through the 4 rooms again and ask learners to describe where any of the difficult words are or any objects that they don’t know the name of in English.
5. Explain a little about the game and say here’s the start and show some of the video walkthrough.  Show enough so that learners see a few of the puzzles being solved.
6. Elicit how you play the game and what you do at the start.

Play

1. In a computer room gather learners round a single central computer and open the video walkthrough.  It may be a good idea to open one of the videos on one internet explorer and the other video walkthrough on another.
2. Tell learners that they can play the game in pairs and if they get stuck they can come to the video, watch a little bit and go back to their partner and tell them how to play a bit of it.
3. Put learners in pairs and get them on the game. Tell one of the pair that for 5 minutes they are the gamer.  The other is the watcher and they go back and forth to the video walkthrough.
4. Start the activity.  Monitor to ensure learners are using English and encourage them to use the words from the preplay activity.
5. Swap gamer and watcher roles after 5 minutes.

Post Play

1.  Learners write directions to  the end of the video.
2. Learners record vocabulary items from the game and make a Escape Pear Room dictionary.
3. Learners write a Dear santa note explaining the story and wishing to escape.

1 Christmas facts

Test your learners knowledge of Christmas with these ten questions.  You can either get them to write down their answer and pass it to the next person to mark (before returning it) and then take a class poll on what they think the right answer is.  I always throw out a few bonus points as they come to me.  After the question on the left I asked them to write down the names of the other reindeers, then looked them up online and gave out bonus points for each – it kept the game a little more exciting.

2 Around the World

If you liked the last Christmas Quiz then give this one a go too.  I think the questions are a little harder but if you think your learners are up for it then why not give it a go.  You can always play this quiz straight on the end of the last one if you are looking for a quiz with more than just 10 questions.  Play these two and you’ve doubled the amount of questions to 20.

3 Q’wick Q’westion Q’west

I don’t know how your multiple computer access situation is but when my learners are on a computer in pairs I’m lucky enough to have a large screen connected to a computer at the front of the class.  Learners told me where to click (moving from the reindeer towards the candy cane) and when they saw the question I gave them until the first pair said “next” to find the answer on the internet.  I then took the direction the pair that said next told me to take in the game.  This continued until we had finished.  If you want to be extra sneaky (and give slower ones a little more of a chance) then get learners to write the answer down.  You can then (sneakily) get them to write out questions to the answers they have written down at the end of the game.

4 CBBC Christmas Quizzes

The CBBC website has a few fun christmas quizzes up.  The nice thing about this page is that there are a few quizzes there for learners to work through autonomously on computers.  You can monitor and help with language (or even set an online dictionary for them to use) while learners take each quiz in turn.  Encourage them to make a note of how many points they score in each so that you can declare a winner at the end of the activity.

5 IWB Christmas Quiz

A downloadable interactive PowerPoint Quiz for Christmas from the people at tes. No searching questions here – just 15 multiple choice questions based around Santa, The Nativity and Traditions. Click on the correct answer and you’ll get a ‘Well Done’, but click on the incorrect answer and you’ll get a ‘Try Again’ for the opportunity to go back and have another go.

6 DIY Quizzes

Well sometimes it’s best just to do your own quiz so you can grade the language, add your own images and effects or simply so that it can be saved on a network computer for other teachers to use.  If this is the case then check out this website for a large list of Christmas questions and answers.  The site invites you to cut and paste but I find it’s a good idea to check their spelling and grade some of the language there for your own purposes.

7 More Merry Christmas Resources

This site has a mix of all the above.  There are interactive quizzes, ideas for questions with answers and explanations as well as video quizzes with audio.  It’s a bit like going to Santa’s grotto and having a lucky dip grab – you might be lucky and find something you really like here.

 8  Christmas Carols

If you are feeling extra adventurous then one idea might be to have a Christmas quiz that goes with Christmas Carols.  This quiz focusses on just that.  What would be great now is if you can find all these carols online on a video sharing site and play them while the question is up there.  Hey Presto!  You have a listening and reading activity.  Would be a great one to do but sadly I have two more ideas to come up with for this post so I’ll leave this one for you.

9 Triviapark Christmas Quiz

If you are not feeling so inspired to make your own Christmas Quizzes and you are simply looking for more to use in the connected classroom then here’s a nice little website.  There’s a novice level quiz as well as a regular level quiz, which is a little trickier, and also a more challenging expert level.  It’s worth making a note of the website too as there are a load of quizzes on all sorts of topics here.

10 PowerPoint Quizzes

There is some demand for downloadable PowerPoint quizzes that have already been made for you.  Here are some more.  A word of warning though – these have not been made with English language learners in mind so a little tweeking here and there may be needed.  Good luck!

The course is an introduction to using online games in the ELT classroom and is free for anyone who wants to attend. The idea is for us to explore the use of digital games in the classroom from 5th-15th December. There will be games to try out, questions to ask your students, discusssions about the value and classroom practice using digital games, and there will be an opportunity to create your own ‘Pick-a-Path’ game using the photo management software, Flickr, at the end of the course.

There will be six topics during the course, which are:

• Introduction to online games
• Games to encourage speaking
• Games to practise listening
• Games for reading & writing
• Games and grammar & vocabulary
• Games projects with classes

Hope to see you there!

Digital Play

This book was written by both Graham and myself and we are particularly proud of it.  This teacher development book starts with a look at the state of play in gaming with an eye cast specifically on education and language learning.  It’s also packed full of ready to use digital play activities covering a range of classroom scenarios from no available technology, through one computer and a projector to multiple computers.  If you are a fan of this site then this book is (in our biased opinion) a must.

Closing date for the competition is the 8th of December.

Good Luck!

Send your competition entry to: kylemawer@yahoo.com

Location: Computer room, class set of laptops (or game play for homework)

Skills Focus: Reading, Speaking

Game: http://www.enercities.eu

Enercities is a computer simulation game which lets you build your own city. It is suitable for  intermediate and above students and worth playing for the vocabulary of cities and discussion possibilities. Topics that are relevant include: Cities, Politics, Money, Renewable energy, Global warming, etc.

The aim of the game is to build a sustainable city with a population of 200. It’s probably best played in a computer room or with a class set of laptops. Alternatively, you can introduce the game to the students and ask them to play at home.

There is quite a lot of reading in the game, so I recommend looking at the instructions how to play with the students, letting them play and then doing a post-game follow-up discussion about their results and the best strategies for playing the game.

Here’s a class handout (PDF): Digital_Play_Enercities