Spoons

GRAMMAR: General Game     SUBMITTED BY: Patrick Bickford     BORROWED FROM / INSPIRED BY: HAJET Eikaiwa Manual     DATE ADDED: Sept 02, 2009     EDITED BY: まだ

ÒÓ    èê   15-30 min.   4 1 votes: 4-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:

• Spoons or chopsticks
• Sets of cards (not included): Each set should have a different theme: sports, family, food, etc. For JHS level and higher, I would suggest using cards with words instead of pictures so the students have a chance to practice their reading. 

Detailed Explanation:

1. The object of this game is to try and collect a complete set of themed cards.
2. After splitting the class up into groups of 4-6 students, each student in the group receives one card from each theme, or each group can receive one whole set of all the themes and they can shuffle the entire deck and deal out the cards. NOTE: Depending on how many people there are in the group, the number of themes should match the number of students in the group. For example, if there are five students in a group, there should be five different themes.
3. Also, every group receives a number of spoons, one less than there are students in the group. Place the spoons in the center of the group. NOTE: It's probably easier to use chopsticks in Japan.
4. Play starts by everyone passing one card they do not want to the person to their left. Since this is English class, you might have everyone call out their card on the count of three as they pass it.
5. The first student to collect a complete set, grabs a spoon/chopstick from the center. Then, the rest of the group races to get a spoon/chopstick, and the student without one receives some type of English-related punishment, or they can be dropped from the game. If you do the second option, make sure you remove a spoon/chopstick because there always needs to be one less than the number of people in the group.

Comments:

• (4 days ago) Ebony said:
  My students loved this game! I picked really easy themes and words for each card, like for Sports I used baseball, basketball, soccer, and volleyball. My JHS third years loved this game and some students became really competitive.
  I will say that there are some students who are not as good as reading/ can't read at all who could not enjoy the game at first. I made sure to write all the themes and individual words on the board and go over them together as a class first, and then I left everything on the board while the students played. This was great because the slower students were able to refer to the board from time to time.
  I was suprised at how easily I was able to adapt this game for my first years as well. We played the exact same way as the third years and it was a great success. There was only one student in the class who just shuffled cards around and waited for an opportunity to grab spoons rather than actually play, but that student can't read English so I expected that.
  I highly recommend this game as it provided great fun for my students and a opportunity to relax and have fun!
• (Dec 8, 2011) Elissa said: When I use this game, it's a bit different. I use it most often when teaching the pronouns "I, my, me, mine, you, your, you, yours, etc." I make a deck of cards that has one of each pronoun (ends up being 36 cards, I think). I put students into groups of no more than 5. Each student gets 4 cards. One student is "leader" and they have the rest of the deck. The leader draws one card from the deck. The leader then has five cards, so s/he must look and decide which card to pass to the next student. The card is passed around and then discarded by the last student rather than being passed back to the leader. Once a student makes a set of cards that match (i.e. they have the "I" card, the "my" card, the "me" card, and the "mine" card), they try to discreetly take a pen/spoon/eraser/chopstick. Once the rest of the group realizes and all the spoons are taken, then the leader collects and shuffles the cards and begins again. (It is a good idea to have the students take turns being "leader" and the last person because each position has its benefits)
  
  You can also play this with sentences. For example if you are teaching the "be V+ing" grammar point, you can make cards various sentences. Have subjects (I, You, He, She, Ms. Green, They, MatsuJun, Pikachu, Gachapin, etc...anything is OK) and then a bunch of be verb cards (is, am, are...5 or 6 of each card) and then verbs (playing, watching, reading, studying, etc.) and objects that can match the verbs (soccer, baseball, a movie, TV, a book, math, Japanese, English). In total, the kids would need to get a set of 4 cards: "I" "am" "playing" "soccer." Or "Ms. Green" "is" "reading" "a book." Then they take a spoon/pencil/chopstick/eraser. This can work with almost any grammar point, just have lots of cards in the decks and preferably lots of things that go together (i.e. 2 "playing" cards and then a bunch of sports and musical instruments.)
• (Sept 30, 2011) englipatrick (mod) said: All the cards are dealt out at the beginning of the game. If there are 5 students per group, there should be five different distinct themes. However, before the game starts, mix all the themes together and deal them out.
• (Sept 29, 2011) Anonymous said: But how do they win cards?