Tangram Battle
Submitted by: Bill Henry Borrowed or inspired from: Name withheld to incriminate the innocent Date added: 09-06-07
Brief Outline: Tangrams are Chinese puzzles. In this fast-paced game, students compete to be the first team to assemble a tangram. This activity stresses fluency over accuracy and focuses on upon prepositions of location. 
Materials Needed:
- Tangram kits: Each kit should have a various circles, triangles, rectangles and squares. You can make these kits yourself, but should be laminated and have a magnet attached to the backside so they can be manipulated on a chalkboard or whiteboard.
- Tangram patterns: One set for each team. The sets should be composed of tangram patterns of similar difficulty.
- Cheat Sheet handout
Teaching Suggestions:
Detailed Explanation:
Split the class into teams. More than four teams is difficult to manage.
Supply each team with a tangram kit.
Demonstrate how the seven tiles of a tangram kit can be used to form many different shapes.
Distribute the new vocabulary cheat sheet and practice the new terms.
Teams select one member from their team to go to the chalkboard and assemble a tangram using their team’s kit.
Give each team a picture of a tangram to reproduce.
Seated team members must describe the tangram to the member at the chalkboard with the tangram kit, who must try to place the tangram tiles in the proper configuration.
When finished, another team member goes to the board and the team receives a new tangram pattern to reproduce.
Variations and Options:
- After becoming familiar with the activity, have each team creates their own tangram pattern. When finished, each team selects a member to go to the board and then the teams all swap their patterns and then try to get them assembled the fastest.
Tips or Cautions:
- This activity stresses fluency rather than accuracy of English speech. Insisting that the students try to use perfect grammar undermines this principal goal and kills the rapid-fire excitement of the competition.
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