Choose a letter. Write on the board "Words starting with ～." Have students raise their hands and say words starting with that letter. I have used this as both a warm-up and after class cool down when there is extra time. I like to use a 100 yen shop small ball to toss back and forth. I throw the ball to a student with their hand up and they say a word. Some of the students will not want to catch the ball, so you can just say "catch?" and they can say no if they want. I write all of the words on the board so that when the game is finished we can practice repeating all of the words.
Notes
- You don't have to use a ball at all. Some teachers don't like the ball being tossed around in their classroom, so in this case just have the students raise their hands and have them say the word.
- You can choose to write the words on the blackboard or not. If you write the words, it will take more time, but the students will get more exposure to spelling and reading. You can have the students repeat and practice each of the words you wrote on the blackboard. In the teacher's edition of New Horizons Picture Dictionary there is a page dedicated to all of the sounds in English. It has descriptions of how to produce English sounds in Japanese. I typically have the teacher read the description of the chosen letter and then repeat all of the words written on the board with the students. In the long run perfect pronuciation isn't necessary for communication, but it's good for training those students' ears.
- You can play in which students cannot say the same word twice. I typically just write a checkmark next to the words that have come up multiple times.
- Japanese has a ton of loan words from English. Many video games and TV shows use a lot of English loan words so students actually know quite a few. This game works great for classes that have low motivation or low confidence.
- The variations for this game are endless. You can always level up by choosing words with starting with /th/, /wh/, or /ch/. You can choose words that end with a particular sound as well. You could use categories like fruit and have students say those category words.
-I typically set a timer of 3 minutes, otherwise this game could go on FOREVER.
- If you're JTE or homeroom teacher is competent enough, you can have he/she/them write the words as the students shout them out. This will save you time so you don't have to write. Even if the homeroom teacher isn't competent enough, it's fun to ask them to write the words and try to spell. (Obviously only do this if you have a good relationship with them, otherwise they will be upset you put them on the spot.)
Please comment with any other variations you've tried and/or success stories.