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

Location:  Connected Classroom

Skills Focus:  Writing

Language Focus:  Narrative Tenses

Game:  The First Hero

A game set in the times of ancient greek with a nice shadow puppet look and feel to it.

Preparation

Either play the game using a walkthrough to familiarise yourself with the game or print a copy of the First Hero Walkthrough off.  Also have some dice ready, enough for each group or pair of students.

Pre-Play

1. Introduce the area of narrative tenses as it comes up in the course book.
2. Do some controlled writing activities from the course book or work book.
3. Write 1-6 on the board and write some of the grammar areas next to them.

e.g.

1  Past simple

2  Past continuous

3  Past perfect

4  You can choose

5 Choose two of the tenses.

6 Write three sentences.

Play

1. Explain the game and encourage students to suggest what you have to do.
2. Listen to the students and follow their instructions until the last instruction for that stage of the game.  Stop before you do it so that students can see the stage of the game just before it is finished.
3. Tell students to roll the dice and write the story.  They can write what they like but they have to use the tenses according to their dice role but they can write more if they want.  Each student needs to write so they each/ all have a copy of the story.
4. Monitor and help with language.
5. Repeat the above steps until the game has finished.

Post Play

Also when starting the game you have to click continue, watch a brief storm sequence and then an advert for the game site.  Be a little patient and wait until the game title screen appears again and you can click PLAY.

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 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.

Location: Connected Classroom

Language Focus: going to, modals of deduction (present & past).

Game: The Magician

A nice little game with plenty of language opportunities.  First you see the magician’s stage with the trick ready to go.  You can then watch the trick performed.  You then get the chance to see how the trick is really done as you point and click the screen in the order each part of the trick is done.  Here’s the beginning and end of the first trick:

Play

1. Open the game and show learners the first screen.
2. Get learners to predict what the magician’s trick is (left above).
3. Then ‘show the trick’ (short video sequence to image above right).
4. Learner’s then guess how the trick was done (speaking or writing).
5. They then direct someone at the keyboard to repeat it.  This is done by pointing the mouse cursor and clicking parts of the magician in the correct order.

Example language:

As learners guessed how each trick was done I monitored and input language as necessary.  It’s also quite fun – especially if you haven’t watched the trick before yourself – to join in with the guessing.  Great way to model the target language yourself and possibly inject a little humour into the process.  I thought my suggestion that ‘it might be a projected image of a bird – look at the circle of light around it’ was quite good.  After a or two minute I interrupted and in feedback I wrote any new language as well as the best suggestions on the board. For this I reduced the window the game was in so it wasn’t visible but was still ready to continue with.  New language was highlighted so as to draw learners’ attention to it and also make it easier for them to see and use later.

The Magic Tricks

There are about half a dozen tricks in total but I’ve never really got past the first few.  The first three are enough to practice the language with and, to be honest, some of the later tricks get quite fantastical and could prove to be too challenging linguistically.  Take a look at the screenshot on the left here to see how complicated things can get.  Both red levers on the left and right, the two guys, the chains, the pendulum, hidden keys, a screen, the cage and the candle (a red herring by the way) all make this quite a difficult task.  The first few tricks involve:

1. Disappearing bird
2. Levitating woman
3. Escape the water tank

These are quite well-known magic tricks and so learners should have a good idea about what happens in the trick, remember the trick once it has happened and have some good ideas over  how the trick was actually done.  The added bonus is that it’s quite fun discovering how they are actually done.  Hope none of you are too disillusioned by finding out it isn’t actually magic after all.

Post Play

• At home learners play the game and choose one trick to describe to the class.  They make notes and in the next class they describe what the audience sees when the trick is performed and then how the trick is done.
• Learners write up how a trick of their choosing is presented and done.
• If you or your learners can research a card trick or a coin trick to perform for the next class then get learners to use the target language to guess how it might have been done.

Location: Computer room

Language Focus: Any

Game: Xtranormal

Xtranormal is a text to speech movie maker that’s free and easy to join.  It might be a bit heavy to run but it’s a definite hit with learners.

On the right here you can see a screen shot of the movie maker editor. The instructions are at the top followed by the set, actor, sound and story folders.  The story folder is where all language production begins.

The Story

Simply click on an actor and start writing what you want them to say in the text box.  Once you’ve finished switch to the next actor.

For fast finishers there are the effects running down the left hand side.  Why not customize your movie to:

• Change the camera angle during shots.
• Get the actors to perform actions.
• Get the actors to point to objects.
• Get the actors to make some facial expressions.

. . . and more.

At any time you can hear how Xtranormal converts the text that has been written to speech.  It may not be the most authentic sounding speech but it serves the purpose.

The free account is more limited than the options open to those that pay but the free account does offer a good range of sets, actors, sounds and stories. If you did decide to go pro and get the better upgraded options then its worth bearing in mind that learners on multiple computers can access, work and save on a single account  - at least they can on the free one.

Why not watch an example of two actors discussing how an Xtranormal movie can be used with a class.  That way you can judge for yourself if you think its worth turning your language learners into movie makers.

Level: I’ve used this site with language learners as young as 8 to adults.  You just have to make sure the activity task is appropriate and to their level.

Language focus: The first time I use this with learners I generally just let them get on with it.  As I monitor I’ll help on correction, input language and ask them about the direction they are moving in.  Then, in later classes I like to return and get learners to open their movie projects and expand on the text using recent language we’ve covered in class.  This generally means the final product contains a range and complexity of language that they can be proud of.

If learners feel inspired enough to start a new project this is also fine but I always encourage them to review some of the language we’ve done over the course and encourage them to recycle it.

Have fun and maybe see your language learners at the oscars one day.

Location: Connected classroom

Skills focus: Writing

Language Focus: Relative clauses

This is a nice little activity to stimulate a little writing in class.  I have used it to practice relative clauses but there’s no reason that you can’t just forget a language focus and just get learners to write.  I’ve done this activity a few times and I either :

1. Let them see the titles of the game and ask them if they know the game.  If they do if they know the music.  If they don’t know the game I ask them to predict what the music might sound like.
2. Don’t let them see the titles and simply play the music following the instructions below.

Pre-play

Brainstorm the titles to a few video games on to the board.

Ask the following questions about each game and elicit some sentences using relative clauses.

When is it?          Where is it?          Who is it about?

e.g. Mario brother olympics

I elicited the following:

“In a time when Mario and his friends went to the olympics”

“In a land where Mario and his friends live”

“About people who compete to win the olympics”

Play

• Put learners in pairs and tell them they are going to listen to some music from a video game.
• After they hear each piece of music they should write three sentences about what they think the video game is about.
• You can get them either to number the sentences in order or ask them to write them out of sequence on a piece of paper.  Tell them not to worry if they don’t know which video game it is.  This is not important.  What is important is that they listen to the music and imagine what they think the game is about and write the sentences.

1. Age of empires intro
2. Call of duty 4 intro
3. Farmville
4. Full metal gear intro
5. Grow cube intro
6. Half life intro
7. Spore intro
8. Sims 3 intro
9. Pacman intro
10. Mario intro

Post Play

• If learners have numbered their sentences in order then they can compare their sentences and decide which are the best for each piece of music.
• Play the music again if necessary to help learners decide.

OR

• If learners have written their sentences out of sequence on a piece of paper you can collect them in and hand them out randomly.
• Learners then read them, listen to the music again and match each three sentences to each piece of music.

Homework

• Dictate the names of the games and ask learners to find out online about the game.  They can then rewrite their sentences to compare the following class.

OR

• Learners go home and choose three games (one’s they’ve got if possible) and write three sentences about them.  They then read the sentences out next class to see if their classmates can guess the name of the game.