PREPARATION
A TV screen or projector and a computer or tablet are necessary for this activity. Each student should have a copy of the handout and each group should get a copy of their team character card. You can also make a second copy of the character cards with a magnet to attach to the board where the team points will be written.
PART ONE: SPEAKING RACE
This is done in pairs. The students play rock, scissors, paper. The winner moves their eraser and makes a sentence based on the key words on the board. The loser reactions. They then play again and continue moving. Once a team limit of 4 or 5 minutes is reached the student that advanced the furtherest is the winner. The slide show has tokens you can click on to move for when the ALT and JTE demonstrate the activity.
Steps.
PART TWO: WRITING RACE
Begin the example with the ALT in the roll of teacher and the JTE in the roll of student.
Go to the example screen slide and have the JTE select to play a character.
ALT then clicks on the first question to say JTE. The JTE pretends to write the answer then comes to the ALT with the answer Say 'great' and click on their character button or character depending on the version. This will cause the character to move one space and then ask question number two and JTE will pretend to go back to their group, and tell them question two, make it clear a new member must come with the answer for question two and then hear question three.
Repeat these steps until the fourth question has been answered.
- Then click on the G to show that the 1st place team gets 5 points, 2nd place team gets 4 points, 3rd place team gets 3 points and all remaining teams get 2 points regardless of where they finish. After the third place team has finished I generally set a 10 second timer to bring the round to an end.
Record the team points on the board and then hit the checked goal line to continue to the answer check screen on a regular screen. This is a hidden hyperlink. On this screen it goes to a screen that shows all the teams. The RACE number at the top is also a hidden hyperlink.
At this point I have the students make groups and hand out the worksheets. After they make groups I have one member come up from each group and grab their racer card. Then after everyone is settled I call out each racer and put another racer card beside each teams score space on the board.
Proceed to the round. There are a few small differences. Naturally there are nine characters rather than two.Before starting I tell the students they should answer the question, one member goes to the JTE with their answer. After the JTE checks the answer that student comes to me and tell me their team name. I move the character then give them to next question. After the round is finished check answers and reward each team their points.
Before continuing to round two the bonus screen comes up. If they want they can pick a number box and either get a (+5, +3, +2, +1 or -3). One member from each group comes and picks a box. I mostly use a tablet so for this bit I usually let the students click the crystals and record their own points. During the race screens though I control the tablet.
I usually get through 3 or 4 rounds. If there is time there is some extended writing at the end.