Activity

The Get Japan Game

Quiz-style game based on Japan's prefectures, for learning/practicing "You can see/eat/enjoy" sentences.

Just plugging a game that my JTE came up with that I found really fun. The target sentence of Unit 7 of NH5 isn't actually "You can see/eat/enjoy _", but we included a lot of that in the students' presentation activities for the chapter, and used this game as an easy introduction.

Print out a large, unlabeled map of Japan's prefectures and attach it to the blackboard (if you trust your map-drawing skills, this can also be done with different colored-chalk). Break the class into 4-5 teams, with the ALT as a separate team. Each team is assigned a color. The JTE will choose a prefecture, and name a fact about it - i.e., "You can eat takoyaki" for Osaka. Whatever team names the correct prefecture fastest will have that prefecture colored in with their color, so as the game goes on, you can tell by color which team has "gotten" which prefectures.

I believe my JTE was just choosing prefectures and facts on the spot, so I don't have a prompt list, but there's plenty of common knowledge to draw from - "You can go to Disney Land" for Chiba, "You can eat delicious apples" for Aomori, etc. The ALT acting as a separate team is fun (there was exactly one question that I knew before the students did) but optional, and if it suits your work balance better, you could come up with a list of questions together and take turns asking them. It's also fun to start with a harder question, and if nobody knows the answer, move towards the one that makes the students all raise their hands at once.

This game can also be made more high-engagement by breaking it into rounds, and giving each team a prefecture each round. Give the students a few minutes to come up with 2-3 clues for that prefecture, and have the members of each team trade off reading the clues out loud for the other teams to guess. Run by the JTE, though, this is a very lighthearted and exciting cooldown/breather! It could even be run as a warmup game throughout the whole unit, a few questions a day, so the students can watch and see who "gets Japan" in the end :)

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Submitted by kirig19 February 8, 2023 Estimated time: Flexible
  1. stevenyc113 March 15, 2023

    I have an idea.
    print out all prefectures, laminate them, and add magnets. When a group gets the question correct, just give them the prefecture. This makes it easy to reuse and not have to print so much and also avoids drawing Japan which would be difficult. Giving them a prefecture also feels rewarding. in the end, they count how many prefectures they have. I did this with my pokemon game, they were active and competing hard.

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