Activity

Guess Who! (New Horizon 5 Unit 1)

Students fill out a questionnaire and try to figure out who wrote it based on what things they like.

This is adapted from an old contribution on Englipedia. I looked for it here to link to in the "inspired by" field, but couldn't find it or anything like it, so I apologize if I've missed linking the original here.

Students love to talk about themselves! This activity is designed to practice the "What 〇〇 do you 〇〇?" grammar point over and over and over again, but it uses information the students wrote themselves, so they're always engaged for the entire class even though it's quite repetitive.

Start off by showing them the first half of the instructions in the PowerPoint. I've written them all out step by step in Japanese with furigana, so it should be crystal clear to all students. Give them the questionnaire and have them fill it out. The quiz is about everyone's answers, so they should fill it out in secret, without showing any of their classmates. This is 3rd grade before they've even started the alphabet yet, so my instructions say to write their names in Hiragana since there's no chance I can read their first names in kanji. After they write their name, they should fill out the questionnaire writing only one answer in each box (there's always someone who writes more than one, so I have to specify). I also say that they can't write "dog" or "cat" for favorite animal since everyone would write those and it's super duper boring that way. Finally, I say that they can write their answers in Japanese, and that I will translate their answers to English afterwards when we're doing the quiz. If you're not confident in your Japanese to do this, try to work with your Japanese teacher to do your best, and any words both of you can't translate are fine to just read in Japanese.

Then pause the PowerPoint and give them 5 minutes (probably more like 8 minutes, but I always say 5 at first so they don't waste time doing nothing for a few minutes before they start) to actually fill out the questionnaire. After the time (plus 3 minute extension) is over, collect the questionnaires. If they haven't finished, collect them anyway and you'll just use the questions they actually did answer. Then finish going over the instructions in the PowerPoint. Be sure to practice all the questions together before you start the quiz.

Choose a question you want the students to ask you, and say "number 3 please, one...two!" Then, in unison, students will ask you that question (permanently left up on the PowerPoint once the quiz starts). Then you answer "I like 〇〇" and say whatever the questionnaire you're looking at says. Students think about which of their students likes that thing, and raise their hands to guess who wrote it. If they're right, you give them a sticker (or stamp, or whatever reward you want to give them). I usually give around 3-4 students a chance to guess per question before forcibly making them ask me another question (to provide more information). Once they've guessed who wrote it, move onto a different questionnaire and start again. You don't have to ask the questions in order, so look at the questionnaires, and try to select answers you feel are particularly unique or noteworthy and go from there.

I've used both my name and my picture in the instructions for this, so you'll have to change those to yourself (or clipart or something) before you show the PowerPoint to the students.

I've included a lesson plan written in English and Japanese, so your Japanese homeroom teachers can read it and know exactly what the plan is.

The font used in this is UDデジタル教科書. It should be on all of your school computers, but I don't have it on my personal computer at home. I prefer it because it has the handwritten lowercase "a" as well as other handwriting differences, but doesn't look like garbage like Comic Sans. If you don't have it, there might be some formatting discrepancies.

Credit to flaticon.com for the use of the icons.

Files:
Small files
  • New Horizon 5 Unit 1 Guess Who Lesson Plan.docx (20.9 KB)
  • Medium files (requires an account to download) -
  • New Horizon 5 Unit 1 Guess Who.docx (1.73 MB)
  • New Horizon 5 Unit 1 Guess Who.pptx (4.4 MB)
  • 12
    Submitted by sui892001 March 23, 2023 Estimated time: 45 minutes

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