Minefield Game: Indirect Questions

This game was a big success with my Junior High kids! It's a Google Slides game that you can apply to many different grammar lessons. It's a good way to review, because it forces the students to think quickly and memorize the correct sentence pattern in order to win. There's enough wiggle room that they have to actually think about their answers, but enough structure that they will be able to master the target sentence without too much difficulty. Best for classes of 15-30 kids.

I used it to review the New Crown 3 Lesson 7 grammar point of indirect questions ("I don't know why Miki is sad").

Split the students into groups of around 4-6 (whatever is easiest for your classroom, our easiest groups are the "lunch groups") and give each group a small whiteboard, marker and eraser. Explain the rules, and give them the target sentence form on the black/whiteboard. I wrote something like this, with the words in parentheses lined up below each other so it's easier to read:
(I don't know / Can you tell me / Do you know) (what / why / where) (he / she / they) (is / are) (~~ing / ~~ed / emotion word).
I usually do one example first to make sure they understand the game, before counting points.

Game Instructions:
1. One group picks an image on the projector screen.
2. All groups write the target sentence about that image on their whiteboards.
3. The first group to finish the sentence and hold up their board gets the first chance to "look behind" the picture.
4. If their sentence is correct, they can "look behind" the picture. They'll either get a gold piece (+1), a pile of gold (+5), swap (they pick another team to swap points with), a bomb (-2) or the death button (they pick one team to take away 5 points from).
5. If they are incorrect, the next team gets a chance.
6. The team that is correct gets to pick the next picture.
7. Whoever has the most gold/points at the end is the winning team!

And that's the game! You can put as many or few pictures on the slides as you want, to adjust the length of the game. You can also ask them for a different target sentence and/or switch the pictures. Honestly, it's a pretty flexible activity.

One note about the format of this sort of Slides game: in order to reveal the item behind each picture, you must click on the picture itself. It is linked to a slide that specifically reveals only that item. Once you are on that slide, click the item to go back to the main slide. You can use a whiteboard marker to X out the ones you've already done when you're back on the home page.

Here is the link to the slides - feel free to make a copy and adjust it to your heart's content!
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Zs6b7sTHQ3rnCldqd8xwKFqOMc-7nEC7oH02-Sxf7xA/edit?usp=sharing