Go Fish Spin-off Game
My 2nd year SHS students have been going over countable and uncountable nouns and how to use them in sentences (ex: "there is..." "there are...").
I wanted to make a game where they could practice asking questions using the correct grammar. This was made to supplement NatGeo Time Zones 2 book, Unit 7 on food!
I haven't really had the chance to play it a ton with the students as it does take awhile to explain (my JTEs don't really translate anything for the students ;__; so everything takes extra long to explain). But, I thought I'd post it here incase anyone wanted to try or had any feedback for me!
Card Set-up:
5 countable noun sets (3 per set, 15 total)
5 uncountable noun sets (3 per set, 15 total)
= 30 cards per deck
How many cards total depends on class size, but you wouldn't want groups larger than 5.
For example, most of my classes are 40+ students so 8 groups which means 240 total cards. (Spent a deskwarming day to cut all of them and it was awesome!)
How to Play:
Give each student group of 4-5 a deck.
Tell them to shuffle the cards and pass out 3 cards to each student face down.
Also tell them to "pretend" that their decks are their fridges.
Put the leftovers in the middle of the play area.
Have a student start (from however you like, janken, youngest, etc.)
Have them choose a student where they can ask "Is there any ... in your fridge?" or "Are there any ... in your fridge?".
Important: Make it clear that they can ONLY ask about food they already have in their deck.
(You'll have to monitor if they're using the correct "are" or "is" based on if the noun is countable or uncountable.)Then, the student that was asked will respond accordingly with the target sentences being "There isn't (any)." or "There aren't (any)." and ending with "Go Fish!" if they didn't.
Finally, if they do get cards taken from them or a student makes a set of 3, make sure that each student always has at least 3 cards in their deck -- so have them draw from the middle.
(If there are no more cards in the middle, have the students keep asking each other without fishing to use up all the cards.)
And obviously, if they have a set of 3, tell them to place the set of 3 face up in front of them. Whoever has the most wins!
That's it! Should be fairly close to regular Go Fish! The PowerPoint has visuals of every step too since my kids get a little lost if I don't demonstrate each step. But it doesn't explain everything to a T so I also suggesting trying to do a demo with the JTE and a student. I've had the most success doing that! Please let me know if you try it, I'd love to hear how it goes and if there's any way to improve or make it more fun.
This was perfect for my high school 1年生! I actually had a surprise visit from the principal and VP during my lesson too, but felt good that the students were clearly having fun and using English. I think I might make this a regular extra time game in some of my classes. The slideshow instructions are very clear too, thanks for this!
@ryninhiroshima Wow, just came across this message and it made my day! I'm so glad you were able to use it and that it all went swimmingly well (badum tss....). I only got to play once or twice, so it's nice to hear that it's usable and fun! Thanks for trying it out <3!