What Do You Know?

Archived from Englipedia.
Originally submitted by Ryan Urie on Oct 21, 2011.

This game is incredibly versatile and with some modification can be used to teach different grammar topics at all levels of JHS.

MATERIALS NEEDED:

DETAILED EXPLANATION:

Have the students get into groups of four or five. Pass out one worksheet to each student and one deck of noun cards, one deck of verb cards, and one die to each group. Make sure the two decks of cards are different colors so the students don’t get them mixed up.
Have the students janken to determine who goes first. Player 1 will randomly draw a noun card and a verb card and ask Player 2 the resulting “Do you know how to ~ ?” question, for example, “Do you know how to play soccer with a cat?” Player 2 will then roll the die. If they get a 1, 2, or 3, they will answer “Yes, I do!” If they get a 4, 5, or 6, they will answer "No, I don’t!” Player 2 will then write their answer on the board: “I (don’t) know how to play soccer with a cat.”
While Player 2 is writing their sentence, a new Player 1 asks a question to the previous Player 1, who has become the new Player 2. Continue this rotation in the group.
Some groups will be much faster than others. When they’ve written 6 correct sentences, have the faster students flip over their worksheets and translate the sentences into Japanese. When they finish this, reward them with stamps or stickers. In the last ten minutes of class, choose students randomly to present one or two of the things from their papers that they know or don’t know how to do.

VARIATIONS:

This game would probably work quite well in pairs, if you don't mind making that many decks of cards. However, I chose to use small groups so the students could have fun sharing the crazy things they "know how" to do, and also so the slower students would still participate and get help from the others.
This game can be modified to suit a large variety of topics. Everything stays the same except for the worksheet. For example, to teach past tense, just change the name to "What did you do?", the question to "Did you (noun) + (verb)?" and the answer to "I (verb-past tense) + (noun)." You can do the same for future tense, infinitives, and a wide variety of other grammar topics at all levels of junior high. Even though it takes a bit of work to make the cards, if you can use the game three times it's well worth it. That being said, I don't think it would work twice on the same class, even with a different grammar topic, since at that point the jokes are no longer surprising. I've attached my past tense version of the worksheet as an example.

TEACHING SUGGESTIONS:

If your students are very strong, you might consider deleting the Japanese instructions from the worksheet
Don't forget to change the noun and verb cards to fit the names of yourself and your JTE, and any other changes you want to make to suit your class's level of vocabulary

TIPS/CAUTIONS:

As happens with almost every English activity I try, a number of students will skip the English speaking portion and just look at the cards and copy down their sentences. The only way I've found to combat this is to wander among the groups and make sure I'm hearing a reasonable amount of English. If anyone has a suggestion on how to better go about this I'd appreciate it!

Files:

Small files

Submitted by Englipedia Archive July 19, 2019 Estimated time: 35-50 min