Mastermind

SUBMITTED BY: Gerry Black / Charlotte Steggall     BORROWED FROM / INSPIRED BY: The board game     DATE ADDED: Jul 2, 2010     EDITED BY: まだ

ÒÓÔÕ    èéêë   20-30 min.   25 votes: 4.5-star If you're going to give this activity a low-rating, please post a useful comment to help make it better. SearchJHSActivity

Materials Needed:

• Mastermind attachment: There are worksheets for: Present Progressive Verb (verb+ing), Present Perfect Verb (have ever...), Passive Tense (was eaten) and a blank game board to tweak however you would like.
• There is also a FutureTense worksheet.

Detailed Explanation:

1. After students make pairs, each student chooses one option from each column on their worksheet to make their "Secret Sentence" and write it in the box. Their partner must not see this sentence. Let's say the secret sentence is, "Will he buy a banana?"
2. Students janken, the winner guesses first. The student guesses, "Will he eat a banana?" There are two sections which are correct, so that student gets two points. The student writes the guess in the grid at the bottom, putting their score in the first box of each row.
3. Take it in turns to ask until both students have correctly guessed their partner's sentence.
4. It's good to play a second time since the students will know the game better and know to pick a better sentence the second time.

Teaching Suggestions:

• It's a good idea to review the target grammar point before playing this game. This game can be adapted for any grammar point, the ALT can just slot in different nouns and verbs depending on what is being taught at the time. I have left a blank worksheet, as well as some examples I have used in the past with various grades.
• For the Future Tense worksheet, 'question marks' were forgotten to be added to the rightside of the sentence boxes. You might want to add them before you print it.

Comments:

• (2 days ago) Benoit said:
  I find that it works fine with any class, as long as the JTE really understands the game and explains it well to the class.
  Cool variation I do is have them play in pairs until one in the pair guesses right. Then have them find another player until one wins, and so on. At the end, ask how many people won once, twice, more than five. Gets them pumped!
• (Jan 20, 2012) David said: I was really looking forward to this game, but unfortunately it bombed.
  This is listed as an activity that works with bad classes, but I don't think it should be. My kids simply had too short of an attention span to listen to the JTE explain the rules, no matter how hard we tried. When you have a class of 30 kids who give up trying to listen and start chattering if they don't understand something within 10 seconds, a game like this is just too hard to explain, it seems.
• (Jan 17, 2012) Matt said: I can't say enough how wonderful this activity is. My classes really enjoyed it! Well done!
• (Dec 16, 2011) Simon said: Used this today, it was awesome, everyone loved it. Great job!
• (Dec 7, 2011) Anonymous said: Are the dogs on the sheet as a reference to that episode of The Goodies where a dog plays Mastermind?
• (July 7, 2011) Jason Grant said: I love this game, though I play it a little differently. The way I play it is the students make groups and it is students vs. teachers. The teachers both have the same "secret sentence" and the students, in their groups, write down a sentence and each student in the group takes turns going up to the front and guessing the teacher's sentence. The students are given the number, they go back to the group and everyone decides on and writes the next sentence. The next person comes up to the teachers with that sentence and it goes on like that.
• (June 29, 2011) Akita ALT said: This is a great activity, I wish I had found it sooner! The students really enjoyed it. It was a little confusing trying to explain it to my JTE at first but once she figured it out, it worked very well. I love that it is flexible and can be used for different grammar points. Thanks for this post and the worksheets with it!!
• (June 14, 2011) A said: This is a very good and simple game. It's great for review and introducing sentence structure.
• (May 12, 2011) B said: Very good game. I used it to review passive voice. To make it a bit more challenging I just gave them the subject, object, and plain verb. They had to add supplemental vocab and conjugate as needed.
• (Feb 23, 2011) Mary said: My students and teachers LOVED this game.