Saturday, July 16, 2005

Vocabulary Battleship

This is an exciting game for all students where they must simply find random words on a printed page. First make a photocopy of a page of text, maybe from a novel or text book. It should be fairly dense with words for advanced students and a lot less dense for beginners.

Then paste that photocopy on a larger blank sheet of paper. Just above the pasted on photocopy evenly write A,B,C,D to about J and along the side write numbers from one to about twelve. That way when a student finds a word he can pinpoint the location and like in Battleships announce F-6 or B-12 to prove he found it.

Now make enough copies for all the students in your class. Your preparation is done. In class hand out the prints and on the blackboard draw an elongated grid that should resemble straight race track with one lane for each row in the class. Number the lanes so row one is team one, etc.

Then break up the horizontal lanes by evenly drawing eight vertical lines. Write the word GOAL or FINISH at the end and lets play. Call out a word from anywhere on the page. Try an easy word like HAVE or THIS at first to let the slower kids know they can play too. Use it in a sentence if you want. The students must scan the print and the first student to find the word you called out should raise his hand.

You ask him where the word is and he should say F-6 or something like that. If he is right draw a chalk circle on his team's grid in the first section on the track. Make sure you cross out the word on your copy so you don't call it again.

Call out another word, maybe a more difficult one to make it challenging for the better students. Each time a student finds the right word draw a circle on their team's lane, erasing the previous circle until one team completes the course. At the end give the winning team a hand of applause. My kids liked this game a lot.

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In case my CELTA teachers google my work and find this site, it should be noted that the lesson plans here are original work, and that I am keeping them on my blog for my own records. For further information, email me at sandyhoney2@gmail.com.

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