Karuta

Do you know the “Karuta” game. It’s a great game to get students used to a set of vocab. You first need a set of cards. I either use the sets of small vocab cards at a school or I just prepare some myself (for E.S. an image and the spelling of that image, and it need not be card, it can be just paper). So, I get my sets of cards ready, hand them out to the groups of students. Now at my school we study about school events through the year, so I will explain using this kind of vocab. Cards ready? Then let’s play ”karuta”.
There are various ways you can play this game. The way I do it is: the cards are placed face up on the desks. I am the caller and the students are the players. I tell the players to put their hands on the their shoulders. I call out the words (and show a large version of the card), the students repeat after me. When I say “go” after a word then the student who grabs the THAT word card gets that card/point. For example: (me: field trip)-(students say: field trip), (me, I say: fire drill)-(students repeat: fire drill), (me: music festival)-(students: music festival) (me: GO!!)-(students: try grab the card that shows music festival). If there is a disagreement between the players I let them decide by rock-scissors-paper. For each round I ask them to put their hands on their shoulders, or on their head, on their knees, in their pockets, behind their backs and so on. When all the vocab has been said then the person with the most cards is the winner. If I run out of time I let the group get the remaining cards by doing rock-scissors-paper . Japanese students usually know how to play this game. It is a great fun way to expose vocab to students. You can use it in drill-style sentence forms too, so using the same example of vocab I mentioned: I call out “My best memory is my school trip”, (students repeat some or all of this), I say “My best memory is my entrance ceremony” (students repeat), and so on.