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: 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!

Location: Computer room

Skills Focus: Reading

Game: Tanooky Tracks

A Tanooky is a playful but mischievous spirit that likes to possess objects that most resemble its unique personality the most.  In this game you have to find and collect the objects associated with each of the 12 Tanookies in order to find them.  Why?  Because they are getting up to too much mischief.  If you can find them you are helping the occupants of the house, who are being terrorised by the Tanooky presence in their home, get rid of them (see left).

Luckily in the game there is a nice little hint book (see below) that tells you about each Tanooky and points you in the right direction as well as clues as to what objects to look for.   You can see where to click to read the hint book at the bottom of the house on the left.  You can click on this at any point while you are playing the game.  The clues and hints on each Tanooky consists of a riddle and some visual puzzles to mix it up a little.  If you look at the back of this book there are even more hints in case you are really stuck.

The nice thing about this game is that not only is it a visually attractive game with written text to support it but you can also choose to start with which ever Tanooky you like (of course, your learners don’t get to choose the order – you do!). That is, you can deal with them in any particular order.  I like this because sometimes when you have lots of learners playing the same game they can cheat by asking for / giving help using their own native language.  Because this game allows the teacher to dictate the order in which they take down each Tanooky.  Groups of learners will generally be playing the game at a different point.

The teacher can use a walkthrough as they monitor to ask learners guiding questions and help them solve the trickier riddles in the hint book.  Digital Play provides you here with links to the game, the walkthrough and a worksheet.  The latter is for the  learners which gives both extra help (if they need it) on solving the riddles and sets the order for each group to play the game.

Here’s the lesson plan:

Preparation

Print off a copy of the walkthrough and worksheet.  Cut the worksheet cards out (there’s a double copy in case groups overlap and need to look for the same Tanooky).

Pre-Play

1. Hangman ‘Tanooky’.  Ask them what this means.  They won’t know so read them the explanation from the first line of this blog.  Tell them a bit about the game too if you like.
2. Divide the class into 3, 4, 6 0r 12 groups depending on how you will organise them on the computers.  Deal the cut up worksheet equally amongst the groups.  Tell the groups to read the pieces of paper and make notes in their notebooks.  Their notes should include the name of the the spirit and any answers they might like to guess at.
3. Collect back all the cut up worksheet cards.
4. Go to the computer room.  Learners take their notes with them.

Play

1. Learners find the game online and play the tutorial.
2. They then take one of the worksheet cards and find that Tanooky spirit in the game.
3. When they have solved that worksheet card they can get a different worksheet card.
4. When one group has found all the tanooky spirits stop the game.

Post Play

1. If learners didn’t finish the game they can complete it at home.  The game, walkthrough and worksheet can all be found here.
2. They can look at the house in the game and invent their own tanooky spirit.  They describe it and explain what objects it’s connected to, how to find it and write a riddle.

If you can think of any other spin off activities you could do with this game then please feel free to tell us all about it in comments.

Location: Computer room

Skills Focus: Listening

Game: Pirates of the undead sea

This game is not as gory and bloody as it gets by a long stretch but it is just about as far as we go here at Digital Play.  The story is of a zombie pirate who is trying to solve the mystery of how he ended up being a zombie and how he can get back to being a pirate.  Nice thing about this game is that there is lots of in-game text that builds the characters and moves the plot/ game forward.

It’s worth telling the class that it is important to read what the characters in the game say because they provide clues that will help them to not only solve the mystery but also play the game.

Preparation.

Download a copy of the Pirates of The Undead Sea walkthrough. Or alternatively use the Video Walkthrough to be a bit more spontaneous with your dictation.  You’ll need one of these in the computer room to run your dictation off.

Pre-play

1. Explain that they are going to play a fun online game but that it is very important to pay attention to all the details.
2. “It’s very important to pay attention in this game.  What the characters say in the game will help you solve the mystery.  In fact, it is so important that they pay attention to everything that even the title of the game is important.  Now watch and listen carefully.”
3. In a connected classroom get learners attention and open the game for the whole class to see. The sequence it the title page of the game shows a pirate’s ship going backwards making the reverse ‘peep’, ‘peep’ sound that lorries can make when reversing.
4. Ask learners about what they saw and heard and what conclusions they can make from this.

Play

1  Make Your Monster

In a computer room get young learners (7 – 9 yrs) to make their own monsters and write the description for their monster. e.g.

My monster has got green ears and green hands.  He’s got a square blue body.  He’s got red eyes, a big grey nose and sharp yellow teeth.

Collect their descriptions in and correct them.  If you can save their monsters (screen capture) too that’s great.  Then next class you can hand out the descriptions randomly to other students (making sure no-one gets the one they wrote) and students reproduce the monster from the description.  Compare with the original monster picture if possible.

2  Goose Bumps

Again in a computer room with young learners (7 – 9 yrs), another way to use the language from the previous activity is to make a monster yourself, write out the description for it and dictate it to your learners.  They have to listen and reproduce the monster you are describing. e.g.

He’s got an orange head. He’s wearing a grey suit with a red bow tie.  He’s got big strong green arms.  He’s got very short legs and they are yellow.  He’s very ugly.

Check to see if any of the student’s monsters are different and ask students if they can say what is wrong using the target language.  Praise them if they get it right.

3 Make a Monster

Drag the body parts on the left onto the create area and manipulate each part with the controls below.  The controls here are a little more complicated and the game a little more complex so I use this game with older learners (9 – 11 yrs).  You can use the game to stimulate a writing a description activity.  Language can be a little more complicated and have a greater range. e.g.

My monster likes eating small children.  He doesn’t like tidying his room and on Saturdays he likes to watch horror films.  He sleeps in the day and goes out at night to scare people.

If you can’t save the monster using screen capture then get your learners to copy the monster into their notebooks.  Give them 5-10 minutes to do this copying from the computer screen.  they can colour it in or add other details at home.

4 Halloween Monster

Play the game yourself and write/ type it out and print a single copy of the description out.  Then go to the computer room and ask students to sit in pairs.  direct them to the website and tell them they have to make this picture and show them the printed description.  Put the description on a wall (blu-tac) and tell one student in the pair they have to come up, read and go and tell their partner the description.  When they can’t remember any more they have to come back and read the next part and go back to their partner and repeat.  After 5 minutes the pair change roles.  Here’s an example of a description:

There is a brown path leading to a very tall scary house.  There are five lights on in the house.  The monster is on the right of the house. He’s standing to the right of the path in the middle.  He’s got a pumpkin’s head.  He’s got two grey arms that are reaching out towards the path.  He’s wearing some very old brown trousers and old brown shoes.

When they’ve finished they can look at other pairs’ monsters and spot any differences.

5 Zombie Creator

This is good for a bit of collaborative gaming and speaking in a connected classroom.  Display the game on a central screen and choose the create-a-scene option.  Then encourage learners to dictate to you what to put in the scene.  You input language as it’s needed and encourage learners to repeat the language.  There is some quite select language that comes up so it may help to make a note of the language you expect to elicit and for learners to use. e.g. (see image on the left)

The skulls are flashing.           There is a ghost on the left.          They are in a wood with a moon.           There is a birthday cake.

The zombie on the left is coming out of the ground

As a follow up put learners in teams and they have to write down the scene remembering as much of the language as possible.  Encourage them to ask you how to spell words.

6 Halloween Fright Site

If you want a template for a halloween card then use this site.  There are a few designs using various costumes associated with halloween (skeleton, ghost, and a witch) along with a selection of different backgrounds.  You can choose to have the design coloured in by default or left in black or white.  Once learners have a finished design they can print it off.

• If it’s in black and white do a collaborative open class colouring in dictation.

• If you print off coloured in designs then get your learners to write a halloween recipe, story or poem.

7 Trick or Treat Dress Up

8 Ghost Dress Up

9 Halloween Dress Up

This computer room relay dictation activity has a lesson plan for it posted on this blog already.  Just click on the link or picture to read all about it.  The language covered includes:

has got / is wearing

colour / clothes/ parts of the body

10 Funny Halloween

 Learners open up two internet explorer pages.  On the first one they have 5 minutes to create their character.  When the time limit is up pair two computers together.  Computer A goes to their second internet explorer page which is set to the beginning of the game. Computer B describes their character for Computer A to listen to and reproduce.  When they have finished they should compare and discuss the differences and count them up.  They then repeat but swap roles.  At the end decide which of the pair had the least differences.  Then decide which team in the whole class had the least differences.  Ask them if this is the result of them being good listeners or the others being the best describers.

10 more days to Halloween!

Location:  Computer Room

Langauge: 1st conditional/ will

Skills focus:  Writing

Game:  Quest For The Rest

If you’ve used Samorost 2 with a class then the graphics in this game will look familiar as both were made by Amanita designs.  In Quest For The rest you have to help a group of people solve puzzles and pass obstacles to get back to their community.  This is a visually attractive game that takes place over three screens.

Preparation

Download a copy of the Quest For The Rest worksheet enough for each learner or pair of learners.

Pre-gaming

1. As a pre-gaming activity hand out the gap fill walkthrough.
2. Ask Students to read the first screen and guess the answers in pairs.
3. They can write the answer they think it is in pencil.
4. Put the game on at the front of the class (data projector or and IWB) and play the game and elicit the language to put in the gaps.
5. Complete the first screen so you are happy that the gaps are filled with language that is accurate both in grammar and as an explanation on how to complete the game.
6. Show the students the next screen and discuss how they think the gaps will be filled for the next screen. Correct language but tell them that you don’t know how to do this screen. tell them that they are going to play the game and complete the gaps themselves.

Gaming

1. Take the students to a computer room where there is one computer for two students.
2. One student plays the game (the gamer) and the other completes the gap fill (secretary). In pairs the students play the game and complete the gaps.
3. Students swap roles as gamer and secretary every sentence. Use the secretaries reluctance to write and eagerness to play the game as a means to slow the game down and ensure they complete the gaps as they play the game.

Post Gaming

Location:  Computer Room

Langauge: Giving advice – 2nd conditional/ should

Skills focus:  Reading/ Speaking

Game:  The Power of Research

Welcome to a game where your learners will get the chance to live a little of the hectic life of a hospital doctor.  Most of the language in this game is quite low level but the vocabulary tends to be quite specialised.  I’d recommend that your learners have a good online dictionary to hand when they play this.

The tool bars shown in the screen shot above: patients status (top), possible doctor actions (left), hospital & doctor status (bottom).  This may all look a little complicated but the part of the fun of playing the game is learning to play the game.

Preparation

Write some illnesses onto post-it notes.  I used some illnesses that came up in the game and they included heart attack, flu, influenza, medium fracture, complicated fracture and then a mix of basic illnesses (which aren’t in the game) such as a cold, tooth ache, back ache, a cut etc.  This is a good opportunity to pre-teach some of the illness vocabulary that comes up in the game.

Preplay

Tell learners you are going to put an illness (post it) on each of their heads.  They have to go round and look at their colleagues illnesses and offer advice.  By listening to the advice they can guess their illness.  When they guess their illness they can take their post-it notes off and go and give advice to others.  When everyone has guessed each others illnesses they can sit down.

Tell learners that they are going to play a computer game together.  In the game they are a doctor in a hospital and they will have to deal with patients.  As they play they should discuss their actions and give advice to each other on what they should do.

Play

Learners play the game in pairs and may use an online dictionary if they want.

Monitor and help with any language problems that arise and encourage learners to discuss their game progress while giving advice on what to do next.

Ask learners questions such as:

“What patients have you dealt with today?”

“What did you advise?”

“Where have you been in the hospital?”

“Has the game advised you to do anything?”

“What’s the best/ worst advice you’ve heard so far?”

Post Play

Reflect with a new partner on how they ‘should’ have played the game. i.e. could they have done it better (the answer is usually ‘yes’).

Discuss in open class what illnesses they dealt with and how.  If anyone else in the class can interrupt with advice then ask them to raise their hand and wait for you to call on them.

Location: Computer room

Skills focus: Reading.

Game: My American Farm

The American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture has commissioned a set of games aimed at teaching agricultural literacy.  The selection of games test players on topics as diverse as geography, maths, ingredients to recipes and even the best type of machinery to mow the grass at St. Andrew’s golf course in Scotland.

What I like about the games here is that there is extensive use of language.  Like many online quizzes you get asked a question and you are tested on whether you know a select item of vocabulary.  This goes one step further and provides additional clues.  Take for example the Equipment Engineer.  I chose this one because I was doubtfulwhether my learners would benefit from expanding their knowledge of farm engineering equipment.  However, the language clues contained useful language and valid reading skills practice and avoided technical and specialised vocabulary.  You read the clue, look through the equipment and click on one to read a description of it, then drag it onto the golf green if you think you have found the right piece of machinery. You get feedback on your progress on the left hand side with each ‘cog’ turning gold each time you complete a quest.  Complete three of the quests and you earn a stamp in your passport.

The passport is the the thing I liked the most, though admittably it is the element that is the least digital of all.  You download and print off the passport.  Then with a pair of scissors and some glue you put it together and then when you play any of the games and complete one of the challenges you earn a stamp in your passport (stamp, unfortunately, not included).  This is great as it provided an extra incentive for learners to play the games and even conduct a little (cheating) practice at home.  Luckily, I have a stamp with a rather comical sheep on it (looks a lot like the sheep in Wallace and Gromitt the wrong trousers) and along with my signature over the top (plus the name of the game) means that I can control the game play.  I even offer my hand at doodles around the sheep if a player completes a game a number of times.

But what about the games?  Are they all good?  Well, not all of them but judge the ones below for yourself:

AG Across America Asks questions about aspects of geography and you have to click on a US state the question infers.  Get the question right and you also get given a fact and you learn about agriculture in the states

Amazing Grains Read the question and make a choice on your answer from the two options.  You have a 50/ 50 chance of getting the maths focussed quiz right.

Equipment Engineer we’ve explained already above.

Farmers Market Challenge Choose a market topic (flowers, protein, eggs, fruits, nuts, veggies or cheese) and answer solve maths based puzzles.

Finders Keepers Choose a food group (grains, protein, dairy, vegetables, fruits or physical activity) then read the challenge to find, say healthy physical activities and then drag the right floating images into the boxes.

Let’s make Something Tasty Read the recipe clues and then find the missing ingredients in the word search to complete the recipe instructions.

Little Ag Me Choose a job from the agricultural industry (food chemist, large animal vet, logger, plant scientist, diesel mechanic, produce buyer or environmental engineer) and answer questions about it.  The questions are supported by images so it’s possible to deduce meaning from even some of the more difficult language.

Spin ‘n Solve Spin a wheel to decide your prize and then read a clue to a word before guessing which letters may be part of that word.  If you’ve ever seen the Tv game show ‘spin the wheel’ then you have a good idea how to play this game.

That’s Life Learn about the life cycle of various things (soy, cotton, pumpkin, horse or paper).  There’s actually not a lot of language in this game but I was using a course book that had exercises around this topic.  Learners played this game and then used the language in the book to write about the life cycle in the game.

What’s in The World a nice geography test where you read clues and look at pictures in order to identify a country.  Get the answer right and you get a ‘fun fact’.

Wild Water Adventures Choose an adventure (alpine skiing, ride the rapids, crazy canoe course or olympic swim trials) and practice your reading comprehension skills.  Each adventure has a different story.  Read the story and answer comprehension questions.

There were a few other games on the site but the level of language content was low.  Having said that they are educational so they could be offered as ‘fun’ breaks from English.  I just wouldn’t encourage too much play on them other than to get the stamp in their passport.  Speaking of passports I need to check mine – it’s my summer holiday soon!

And on that note folks Digital Play will be on holiday for the summer.

We’ll be back in September.

Wishing you all a relaxing summer!

Location: Computer room

Skills focus: reading and writing.

Language Focus: 3rd Conditional

Game: A Zombie Story

If you ever played any of the fighting fantasy choose your own adventure books (a single-player adventure game book) then you might like to introduce learners to the concept too.  If you are unfamiliar with them then playing the game above gives you a rudimentary idea of their form.  You read a story, at some point made a decision and then turned to a page that the particular decision you made was linked to and then continued the story.  Incidentally, this activity is graded upper-intermediate because of the high level of language in the game.  There’s no reason why the later activities could not be adapted to lower levels.

Preplay

1. Tell the class they are going to play a game called ‘A Zombie Story’ that has 8 possible endings.
2. Ask them to draw 8 columns and two rows and dictate the name of each ending so learners have this in their note books:

4.  Below that get them to reproduce this:

Play the game on a computer in the classroom and as you play get learners to fill in the ‘What do you do?’, ‘What happens?’ and ‘Useful Language’ categories until you reach an ending.  Learners can then tick the box below the name of the ending.

Play

If you’ve followed the steps above your learners are now orientated towards the language task and you can take them to the computer room.

1. Get learners to play the game and find the 8 possible endings.  They should tick the boxes as they finish them.
2. They then choose the best ending and play again but take notes on the actions (what they do) and their consequences (what happens) as well as useful language
3. Monitor and help with difficult language and ensure they are making notes on ‘useful language’.
4. Fast finishers should sit behind a player and give oral instructions on how to find the missing endings for the player.

Post Play

Choose your own post activity:

• Now that learners have a familiarity with the various story lines and they have chosen one as ‘their story’ you can guide them to writing third conditional sentences.  For example:

If I hadn’t / had got out bed, I would/ wouldn’t have . . . .

If I had slept more, I would/ wouldn’t have . . . .

• Learners create your own story like the one you have played. They should remember to give options in your story with different choices.  The best way to do this is to write each part of the story on a separate piece of paper with the title of the decision made last at the top.  Next class they can read their story to another who decides on a course of action until they reach the end of the story.
• Learners imagine they find another survivor. They think about would you say to them and then and then find someone with a different story and tell them their stories.