20 Q's

Here is an old favorite I play very often with my high schoolers. The students have to guess of what thing the person who is it is thinking by asking him or her at most 20 yes/no type questions.

If no one guesses the answer after 20 tries, the answer is revealed. A "yes" answer earns the questioner another chance to ask, a "no" passes the asking on to the next player. Maybe your students are advanced enough to ask appropriate questions on their own, in my case to facilitate my weak ones I hand out a print I made with examples of questions.

The first question on my print is, "Are you animal?/vegetable?/mineral? Then below that I have written outline style three catagories of questions: animal, vegetable and mineral. Under the animal heading my first question is, "Are you human?" Then I have written questions like, "Are you famous?" "Are you in this school?" "Are you a man/woman?" "Are you Japanese?", etc.

In case the animal is not human I have, "Can I eat you?" "Can I ride you?" "Are you bigger than a _____?" etc. Under the vegetable heading I wrote questions like "Can I eat you?" "Are you delicious?" "Are you in Japan?" etc. And finally under the mineral heading I wrote, "Are you metal/plastic/stone/wood?"

"Are you (blue)?" "Do I have you?" "Are you in the classroom?" "Can I see you?" etc. By using the print my students get a feel for asking questions in English and I have found many no longer need to refer to the paper. I hope you have good luck playing this great word game.