SUBMITTED BY: James White & Patrick Bickford     BORROWED FROM / INSPIRED BY: The card game Top Trumps     EDITED BY: まだ

Top Trumps

GRAMMAR: Comparitive/Superlative     EXAMPLE: Are you taller than Ninja Bob?     DATE ADDED: Nov 16, 2009

ÒÓ    èéê    15-30 min.   6 Votes: 4 Stars If you're going to give this activity a low-rating, please post a useful comment to help make it better. SearchJHSActivity

Materials Needed:

• TopTrump worksheet: One copy for each student.

Detailed Explanation:

1. After the class breaks into pairs and handing out the attachment to each student, everyone takes a minute and secretly chooses a character. The goal is to try and discover the other person's character.
2. Start the activity by having the pairs play Janken and the winner starts by asking a comparative question: "Are you stronger than Ninja Bob?" The loser answers accordingly. Then, the pair switch roles and repeat until the secret character is discovered.
3. Play as many times as the students are having fun.

Variations:

• The character cards can be affixed to thick paper, cutup, and distributed to each student or each group.
• If a set is distributed to each student:
  • Students circulate, meet, play Janken, and the winner chooses one of the categories on the cards:
    height, clever, nice, speed or power. Then, they choose a card from the other person's set, and visa-versa.  The student who has the higher number in the previously chosen category then makes a comparative sentence: "Godzilla is taller than Ninja Bob."
  • Once complete, the winner collects the card and they go their separate ways, find another partner and play again.
  • To get the sexes to mix, make a rule that boy/girl pairs can play two rounds. 
• If a set is distributed to each group:
  • After deciding who goes first, the winner starts by challenging one student in the group: "<Character's name> is taller than you." Or, the winner can challenge the entire group: "<Character's name> is tallest of all." For the one-to-one challenge, the challengee creates a comparative sentence based upon the card they play: "Godzilla is taller than Ninja Bob." Even if the challengee doesn't have a card that beats the challenger, they must play a card and create a sentence: "Pokemon is NOT taller than Ninja Bob." For the group challenge, each person lays down a card and the winner creates a comparative sentence: "Ninja Bob is the tallest of all." 

Tips/Cautions:

• Some of the titles on the cards might need to be explained beforehand. 

Comments:

• (Jan 30, 2012) Mike said: I think it'd work better if you use those 4 pages and just give like 3 cards to each student and if they lose all their cards they can ask the teacher for one more. Or just give one card to each student and then they trade after doing the dialog.
  Otherwise my input is the characters might confuse some kids, and Goku is listed as Naruto.
• (Jan 30, 2012) Ben said: The kids are right...It's not Naruto..But close..
• (Jan 17, 2012) englipatrick (mod) said: Maybe you could try handing out one page of characters to each pair? Once the pair plays a couple of times, the class could change pages so they have a complete new set of characters to play with?
• (Jan 16, 2012) Phil said: This activity worked terribly... I had to edit 4 pages of characters down to one (do you really give four pages to every student?), and tried to do a group version with each student taking a card and having a sheet to refer to, but it was pretty much lost on these kids.
  I'd blame them, but they're actually fairly intelligent kids. If anyone can explain how they got this to work, I'd love to know
• (Nov 19, 2011) Shishi said: Naruto is Goku XD
• (Mar 3, 2011) Gareth said: Great activity, and gets a great response from the kids. I used a similar one with Japanese celebrities, but we only had about 3 categories. Height, Age and popularity. My only qualm with this version is that the students constantly asked how to pronounce the characters names when making sentences. So for this reason I suggest sticking to things they know or at least eliminating the characters with tricky names,
• (Feb 1, 2011) Anonymous said: I love the idea of this activity. And the attached characters are awesome. But, there are probably too many characters. So, I`d cut the ones they don`t know. Eg. Abe (ex-PM), Danger Mouse, Tony, Saruman, Super Ted, Optimus Prime, Wolverine, and also my students said Naruto`s picture is not Naruto. Also, the abilities name`s `height, clever, speed, power`, was a little confusing when we played the game. Next time I`d change the abilities to `tall, smart, fast, and strong` (even through they are not nouns) It makes it less confusing and easier to make sentences in the target language: EG. <character> is taller than <character>.
  But an awesome activity, that I will use again.