Activity

Verb Sugoroku (JHS)

A flexible board game where students change sentences based on target grammar point.

PREPARATION

  • I've printed this on A3 paper and laminated multiple copies.
  • Dice (you can buy packs of dice at 100 yen shops)

Divide students into groups of 3-4 members.

GAME RULES

  • Students will use an eraser to mark their spot on the board. They roll the dice, move spaces, then change the sentence based on the grammar point.
  • If they land on a bomb, they go back to the beginning.
  • The yellow spaces are extra tricky and will cause the player to move to a bomb space (aka start over).

I've used this for various grammar points for 1st-3rd JHS. They can get progressively more challenging. For example:
"She (cook) dinner" can become...
* 1st - "She cooks dinner" or "She cooked dinner"
* 2nd - "She finished cooking dinner" or "She knows how to cook dinner"
* 3rd - "This is the dinner she cooked" or "She has finished cooking dinner"

I (inadvertently) made the game design quite difficult, so it takes about 20 minutes for someone to reach the end. I've also noticed my students become more interested in winning than practicing English, so be sure to keep them on track.

It's also a nice chance to give stickers as prizes for students who win! :)

LINK

I made this in Google Drawings, feel free to use the link to Make a Copy to edit.
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1_qu6lPhkYe3UaC8ke9CMiVLEwWmCB3CI9oDr2Mu8yrw/copy

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Submitted by lazypanda13 November 16, 2022 Estimated time: 15-30 min
  1. hasamin November 22, 2022

    I wonder I could have doc. version, too. This seems very useful and so fun to students.

  2. fukutanisan November 24, 2022

    Try this website:
    https://pdftoimage.com/

    Thanks for the file, next time please don't forget the doc file also. :)

  3. lazypanda13 November 30, 2022

    Sorry about that, I made it in Google Drawings so there wasn't a way to convert it to a doc file. I added a link to make a copy for yourself in the activity description.

  4. yukiyuki3094 December 7, 2022

    This is really nice. Thank you so much! My junior high students enjoyed playing this game.

  5. akabeko47 February 2, 2023

    My students had a lot of fun playing this game! They were frustrated by the bombs - but in a good way! I noticed it took around 35 minutes to play the game, and most groups were able to finish in that time. I also made a worksheet to go along with the game so that I could see if they were understanding and so they'd get extra practice with past tense.

  6. lazypanda13 February 16, 2023

    @akabeko That's a great idea, I think I'll try to make one as well! I'm sure it would also help them focus more on understanding the content and less about winning the game, too.

  7. noelle February 7, 2024

    Thank you so much for making this! I used this to practice the past progressive with the 1st years and they had the best time. Another teacher came to observe my class and told me she had never seen students so excited to learn English!

  8. idotherock February 20, 2024

    When I first saw this I thought "Nice idea but the game itself looks too difficult" but I didn't have time to alter it myself so I just had to roll with it. Turns out: students loved it as is! They found the difficulty funny and those who did manage to win looked genuinely happy. Also, it meant many students were re-reading the same sentences over and over, so they had plenty of time to refine their knowledge. Thanks very much for this!

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