This game is inspired by Silverflower18's Character ABC idea, but I made my own PPT so I could alter the gameplay. Thanks!
There's a popular character for each letter of the alphabet and I use Shin-chan on the RULES slide as a practice round before we start.
If you click through, three small sections of the character can be shown before the whole picture is revealed, giving the students time to guess. I start by only showing the first section, and usually at least one kid in the class is able to get the right answer. If they can't get it, I ask if they want a hint, and then reveal the next part. I haven't had any classes that couldn't guess who it was after all three little sections were showing, but of course you can give them other hints orally if they're stumped.
After they guess the character I click through to show the full picture and their name, and then have them read through the name letter by letter. In some classes we also count the letters, it depends on the JTE.
Note: I wanted specific parts of the character to be revealed, so in order to achieve that I ended up covering the parts I wanted with white boxes and setting the disappear animation, and then I just covered the rest of the character with randomly sized white boxes kind of haphazardly so that it wouldn't show. If you want to edit or change the characters it might be a bit of a pain, sorry! I'm not super tech savvy so this was easiest for me.
I've attached both an upper and lower-case version. I've used this game with both third and fourth graders, and everyone has a fun time guessing. If the students answer as a class they can get a bit rowdy because they're so excited to shout the answer, so I usually ask for raised hands and choose them individually.
If I'm going to see a class twice in the Alphabet unit, we usually do A-M in one class, and N-Z in the next one. But if not, you can do the whole thing in one go, or with however much time your JTE will give you.
I like the game, but I don't think anyone will say "Hello Kitty" (Kitty-chan) or "Uncle Jam" (Jam Ojisan). I know that's what they'd be called in English... but I don't think they'll make that connection.
Hi! So far every class I've done this with gets Hello Kitty no problem, but you're right - they don't know Uncle Jam's English name, so I always tell them that in English it starts with a U, but in Japanese it might be different. After they recognize the character and say his Japanese name, I explain the meaning of the English one.
super thanks!