Activity

Mystery Match 3

Students combine sentence parts to make three original sentences and try to get a match 3. Practices: "[be] sure that..." "[be] glad that..." and "[hope] that..."

NOTE: If you're working out of NH 2, you will have to explain "hope that...". I encourage you to have the translations for all three key phrases on the board.

Materials:

Computer
TV
Worksheets (one per team)
Pens (for you and JTE to check)

DEMONSTRATING THE GAME
Have the students get in groups and play rock paper scissors to decide writing order.

First there's a practice screen:

Explain that you can make a sentence with any combination of the red, blue, and yellow blocks, and that you want them to make three sentences. Any combination (組み合わせ-くみあわせ-kumi awase) is okay.

Ask the JTE to make a sentence. I recommend: "We are sure that he likes that game." (you'll see why). Indicate that "We" goes in the first space, "are sure that" in the second, and "he likes that game" in the third.

Then make your own sentence. I recommend "I hope that we will go to Disney." Then indicate the writing process again.

Students will take turns writing. They make an English sentence from the choices on the screen, write the Japanese translation below, then bring their paper to the ALT to check English and the JTE to check Japanese. If it's okay, they can go on to make the next sentence. They can only use one block one time, so they can't make three "I" sentences, for example.

Students get 1 point for their English sentence, 1 for their Japanese translation, and can get 1 bonus point (3 points total per sentence). Here's how:

Each block has a "secret sign": sun, moon, or star. If they can match three in a sentence, they get an extra point. Show this by clicking on the parts of your JTE's sentence (which is a match-three star), and your own (no match). In this case, the JTE gets an extra point, but you don't. Usually this is enough to help the students understand how it works, but read the room, yeah?

Then play two rounds. I usually give them 4-5 minutes each. At the end of each round click on each block to reveal the secret sign, and have the student circle the sign on their worksheet so they can see if they got a match-three. I like to ask if anyone got a match so that the other students can see that it's possible. Award winners based on the total of both rounds.

Feel free to play around with the PowerPoint to add rounds and make this longer, if you like!

3
Submitted by the_een October 28, 2021 Estimated time: 15-20 minutes (can be extended by adding rounds)
  1. UonumaRobert October 28, 2021

    Nice demonstration for the activity. A suggestion for the powerpoint. Maybe add a triggered animation to the moons, stars and suns so if they don't get a you can click on the three shapes that were revealed to return the key words and try again until you get a match. As an alternate way of doing the activity.

  2. the_een April 15, 2022

    @UonumaRobert I did this and it helped a lot with the demonstration! Thanks for the input!

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