Activity

Present Perfect Punishment Party

Students ask each other questions about what they've done, and if they get it wrong, they must be punished!

Students sit in circles of between 5 and 10 students (it's flexible.)

Then they take turns clockwise asking the group their own present perfect questions, such as: "Have you been to Tokyo? Have you seen Kimetsu no Yaiba?" and so on.

Students usually have their own personal whiteboard, so they need to secretly answer the question by writing 'yes' or 'no'. After 15 seconds, or whenever everyone is finished, all students reveal their answers, including the student asking the question.

If a given student answers the same as the questioner, they are safe.
If a given student answers differently as the questioner, they are punished.

The optimal strategy therefore for a student is to think of something unique that they've done (such as visiting America) that not many other students have done to maximize punishment. But there's also a mind game involved for the students who answer, who try to guess what the asking student's answer is to avoid being punished. Watching the students think through this problem is fun.

Punishment ideas can be whatever you like, depending on your school and what classes you do. But I like to make a variety of tasks that are fun in their own right, such as:

  1. 5 pushups/5 Squats
  2. Sing their ABC's, days of the week, the hello song, or the months of the year
  3. Read a section from the textbook.
  4. Draw an anime character on the board.
  5. Have a conversation with the JTE.

This requires no prep and could probably be adapted to other grammar points that are answered by 'yes I can' or 'no I can't.'

You can also give students a score based on how many students' they've punished, to help quantify the embarrassment they've inflicted on their cohort. You'll make sadists of them yet!

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Submitted by Beestonian February 7, 2022 Estimated time: 10-20 minutes
  1. GaeilgeAmee February 10, 2022

    This is such a fun idea! Nothing like some mind games to keep their attention! Lookin forward to trying this out. It's good to have some little/no material or prep activities in the back pocket!

  2. HolliAnderson September 15, 2022

    I tried this today with my technical high school students. Its a small class (about 10) and it took the whole class to do this activity which we wanted so yay! We gave them a few minutes to think of questions and didnt tell them about the punishments till the game started. The class was a bit more shy about the punishments and opted for kinder things like high fives, everyone giving a compliment to one student, and even an air volley ball match! Whichwas really fun.

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