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

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.

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!

Level:  Beginner->Intermediate

Location:  Connected classroom (i.e. one computer with an Internet connection)

Language: Directions and driving language (turn left/turn right/go forward/go back / stop – more complicated directions can be used if the level is higher: take the first right / go straight ahead / slow down / speed up / etc.)

Skills focus:  Listening/Speaking

Game: Driver Seat

Preparation

Make sure the game works in your classroom and play the game to get a feel for it.

Pre-gaming

Tell the learners you are going to give them a test, and then after the groans, say that it’s going to be a driving test! Elicit or tell them the basic vocabulary and write this on the board.

Gaming

1. Show the learners the game and the first task (see image below), which is to drive through town and make a few errands. Check understanding and then you’re ready to start.

2. When you can see the car, start driving and pause, asking the learners to tell you what to do (turn left / go straight on / etc) until you get to the first task – Parking (see screenshot below).

3. Ask a volunteer to continue to tell you what you should do to be able to park correctly. If you crash, then you need to start again, and ask for another volunteer. If a learner manages to do it, you can ask another to try to park in less time, giving practice to a number of the students.

4. The next task is to drive to meet a friend for lunch (see screenshot below). Proceed in the same way as you did with the parking section. This time, you have to be careful not to knock anyone down.

5. You can always let the learners have a go at driving too (try some of the other mini games for variation), but tell the person in the driving seat to follow the instructions given by the others rather than drive where they want to go.

Post Gaming

Review the language with the learners and (if appropriate), talk about driving (what makes a good driver? Do people drive well where you live? etc. )

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: Connected classroom

Skills focus: Speaking.

Game: Dot-to-dot

This is a nice little warmer that practices numbers and vocabulary.

Preparation

Choose one of the dot to dots pictures and have it up on the board before your learners come into the class.  It’s a good idea to remember what the picture title is but keep it secret from the class so if you make a note of it remember to keep it out of sight.

I usually play this after the register and at times after I’d checked the homework.  I then chose a student from the class and explained why I’d chosen them e.g.

They have done the homework very well.

They were paying attention when I took the register.

They were very quiet.

They got a difficult question right.

They are being very helpful.

It’s great if you can catch some of the less likely candidates being good and give them a chance to play first too.

Play

1. The play rules get more complicated each time we play dot to dot.  In fact a new rule gets introduced each class.  So, the first time we play rule 1 is in effect.  The next time rule 1 and 2 is in effect and the next day 1, 2 and 3 etc.
2. The volunteer calls out the numbers and you connect them up.
3. The first person to put their hand up and correctly identifies the dot to dot object calls out the number next time (make a note in your register).
4. The first person to put their hand up and say a word / item of vocabulary that is in the picture, takes over saying the numbers. e.g. in the ‘Jerry’ dot to dot someone might say ‘eye’ and then ‘nose’ and ‘animal’.
5. The person who guesses the name of the dot to dot picture can choose the next dot to dot picture (make a note in your register). e.g. ‘jerry’

Post Play

There are a few options here:

• Copy the picture and colour it in.
• Hand out a screen shot of the uncoloured dot to dot picture (take a screenshot after you’ve clicked on all the numbers except the last number).  Learners colour it in.
• Hand out a copy of the finished dot to dot picture and learners write down words associated with the picture.
• If learners can bring in their own dot to dot pictures they can play the dot to dot game (using the rules above) in groups of 4.

Location: Computerroom

Language skills: Reading

Topic: The British electoral process

Game: MP for a Week

This is a great activity for an advanced group of English language learners with not only lots of reading practice but also the opportunity to learn a little about the political process that a British MP has to face each day of the week.  The first step is to choose your name, whether you are male or female and, of course, you take a side choosing either to be part of the governing party or the opposition party.  You then start your week on monday at 9:00 a.m and immediately the minutes start ticking by as if they were seconds.

The game is essentially a whole series of tasks of which there are simply too many to keep up with.  This is all part of the game.  The idea that MPs have too much to do and too little time to do it is implicit within the game.  From the offset you have to prioritize what you have to deal with, how you deal with them and what to let slip by.  Of course, throughout the game each decision you take is reflected in the polls.  Is this stressful?  Most probably but in a game context pressure and stress seems all part of the fun and as long as tasks you are on are doable it’s the kind of game play that is just what an advanced language learning class is looking for.

From the start there are a number of issues that you need to consider tackling on a range of topics.  Choose to deal with what you consider the most important issues and let what you choose to tackle and how you tackle it be the order of the day.  Be careful though as your decisions will affect your running in the opinion polls.  You get to see your progress here

regularly.  In regular progress updates you see how your party’s reputation is faring, what your voter support base is like and how your media profile is bearing up.

The number of tasks in this game just keep on piling up but in a way that justkeeps the game play engaging and challenging.  For instance, you may have to set up committees and select various members from your constituency to sit on a panel to ask your party’s MPs questions. Read your constituents profiles, select who you want and then generate a report on the event.  Your success at this will in turn be reflected in the polls.

There are also various debates that you can attend that call for speeches.  Speeches here consist of five short sound bites.  You get to review a selection of short extracts that could all be chosen to form part of a possible speech you are going to make. You edit them by placing a limited number in a specific order ranging from the opening of your speech on through the various points you want to make to finally  your closing comments. You then get to listen to the finished speech that you have cut and pasted together.

The things you need to do seem to go on and on.  There are seemingly endless meetings to attend.  Of course, it is up to you whether you attend or decline.  What is unavoidable is your mobile phone.  Besides the occasional call there always seems to be a huge backlog of messages waiting for you to answer.  As mentioned earlier there are too many for you to deal with.  As I mentioned earlier, rather than frustrate this just leads more to the feeling that you need to play harder.  That is, there is a lot of work to do but it’s kind of fun to be under this amount of pressure.  Never has reading and answering your text messages seemed so busily enjoyable.

Phew!  A lot to do.  Did I also mention that?  Besides the invaluable reading skills practice here there is also the opportunity to learn about various aspects of the British electoral and political system.  They even make this task quite overt by posing questions in a hints optionand then directing you to look for the answers.  They in turn can be found within concise easy to understand video interviews with take place with real world politicians.

With all that’s been mentioned so far you would have thought there was little or no time time to attend a parliamentary Question time.  Attend question time you should though, and decide on where you stand and who you support on a number of issues.

It’s not all about just reading or listening to text either.  There are a few moments where more ‘game’ like moments drop in.  There is one moment where you have to catch the eye of the speaker by ‘waggling’ your mouse around the screen.  Move the mouse fast enough and in the right place and you might just get noticed.  Too slow and you will be left to last.

There are of course game instructions but I found that getting learners to jump straight in meant they learnt how to play as they played.  They also took about 25 minutes to progress from between a day to a few days (one pair were on Tuesday and another reached Thursday).  That’s out of a whole week that it they are MP for.  For this reason look at this activity taking anywhere between 45 minutes to an hour.  Just because your learners are engaged don’t presume to sit back and take it easy either.  While my learners were kept busy being MPs I was kept busy too.  My time was taken up going round asking questions about what they thought of the game, how they thought they were doing, what they were doing at that moment, whether there were any questions about the language and whether the game was changing their perceptions of what it was to be an MP for a week.  Was it fun being an ‘MP for a week’?  Not as fun in real life as the game we were all sure.