SUBMITTED BY: Raegina Taylor     BORROWED FROM / INSPIRED BY: Akemi Wellington-Oguri     EDITED BY: まだ

Want Me To Janken

GRAMMAR: Infinitive Verb (S + V + I)     EXAMPLE: Do you want her to call you?     DATE ADDED: Jan 30, 2008

Ó    èéêë    35-50 min.   18 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

Tips or Cautions:

• Students will refuse to do some of the actions. Remember the ijime (bullying) issued in schools, and if this is the problem at your school, maybe combat by saying TWO people must do the task.

Comments:

• (Jan 25, 2012) Maggie said: This was so much fun for the teachers and the students! I used the suggestions to modify the activity by having numbered cards (I used construction paper so that it was a bit sturdy). Since it was in Japanese anyway, I wasn't concerned about them memorizing the sentence and let the students choose and take whatever card back to their groups, no writing. The JTE and I were both up front to listen to the question, do janken and keep score. The students could come to either of us. We also just went with our usual lunch groups, so 6 groups of about 4-6 students. At the start, they numbered off so that they knew who was next. It usually works fairly well for my classes this way. For scoring, what I have used with similar games (such as sentences/tasks in numbered envelopes). Instead of bothering to write out all 14 (or more, in our case) numbers for each group, we just credited the teams with card numbers as we went. What I mean is that we drew a large 6-square grid on the board to represent the layout of the groups in the class. As a team won janken and completed the task, we wrote their card's number in the appropriate grid box. We had 16 cards, and the most anyone completed was 13 cards, so that team was declared the winner with the most done, and they got stickers. Thanks for this great activity and all of the suggestions, too!
• (Jan 11, 2012) englipatrick (mod) said: @Small point, Fixed. Thanks!
• (Jan 10, 2012) Small point said: I love this type of game, but there is just one small point. The touch head kanji is wrong. 障る means to hinder, while 触る means to touch. Both are read as さわる though.
• (Jan 26, 2011) Chris B. said: This game is a bit chaotic in groups of 4 for large classes (35+ students). There can be huge lines and a lot of waiting if you do it how the lesson plan suggests, and amidst the chaos it's hard to ensure students are actually cycling through groups in order and not just sending up the same "Super English" students. I took some of the sentences below (stand on chair / take off shoes / fixed self-intro) and incorporated them into my list. I do not recommend using the handstand one since, well, girls wear skirts in JHS. They will not be enthused to do this.
  Writing the sentences out (as suggested in the initial lesson plan) adds about 2 minutes to each task. Considering there's 14 steps, that's ~30 minutes to do translation, let alone speaking and acting. Add to that ~5-8 minutes to introduce the grammar point and words and ~5 minutes to demo the game and a quick 5-minute warmup and you're well past 50 minutes. I suggest omitting the translation note sheet to keep up the pace, but tell kids they can write notes if they so choose for problem sentences / students with less confidence remembering English on the spot.
  Breaking my class into teams of 4 made 9-10 groups depending on the class. That meant my JTE was spending ~5 seconds relaying simple Japanese sentences while kids were queued up a long time waiting to give me English, be told if they were wrong or right, janken, and then perform the action. Very inefficient. I redid the activity to have both of us (ALT and JTE) listening to the kids' questions. If they were wrong they went back and a new person came to a line. If they were right, I had 14 slips of paper (1 side with the sentences, 1 side with numbers 1-14) on a desk in-between us they could pick from, memorize, and relay back to their group. Highly suggest laminating these sheets if you go this route.
  I also suggest making a big A3 sheet with numbers 1-14 on their own lines for each group. Post these up & cross out numbers in pencil. Writing 1-14 for 10 groups on the board takes a lot of time.
• (Dec 7, 2010) Carlee Miller said: I used this in a class of only 4 students and I had them work in pairs. The JTE really liked it and I enjoyed watching how dramatic the students got when they lost janken and had to send the other person to me. Because time was short, we only did 3 sentences, but it was enough to still practice. And after the three were over, the JTE went through all the sentences and had the class translate each into English verbally.
  Glad to have found this activity!
• (Nov 28, 2010) Rob said: Great game! My 3rd graders really had fun with this, but I changed some things around to make it more interesting. As the previous comment stated, I got rid of the paper element, as the students were easily able to memorize the sentences and work out the translation without writing things down. This does shave a good 5-10 minutes off the game, so keep that in mind if filling time is your goal.
  I got rid a couple of the less interesting sentences (sit, walk) and added my own, which were:
  私に椅子の上に立ってほしいですか。 (Do you want me to stand on a chair?)
  私に逆立ちをしてほしいですか。 (Do you want me to do a handstand?)
  私に靴を脱いでほしいですか。 (Do you want me to take off my shoes?)
  And I changed the speak English question specifically to "Do you want me to introduce myself in English?" (Do you want me to do an English self-introduction?), which translates as:
  私に英語の自己紹介をしてほしいですか。
  Also, I recommend bringing in a small glass of water for each group (using your school's tea cups and carrying tray) for the water drinking question. This was the most hilarious part of the game for my classes because many kids (adults too, actually) in Japan don't drink water at all (tea and sports drinks are the closet they get, even during hot days or exercise), so having to chug a cup of water in class was like torture for most of them. Hilarious torture.
  But yeah, fun activity.
• (Nov 25, 2010) Jordan said: I used this in my 3rd grade class of.. 2 students. Despite both being very shy, they thoroughly enjoyed this activity and time passed breezed by. My suggestion for smaller classes, as it worked well for me: In order to avoid students just viewing other teams' actions and copying, I had my students pick a number 1-14, to mix up the order.
• (Oct 28, 2010) Dan said: Great speaking exercise for teacher/student interaction and a very fun game with some hilarious results. The natural performers in the class will thrive on this one but the lazy students might try to stay out of the way. My idea here is to remove the paper element of the game i.e. the Japanese to English translation, as this slows the game down and there is normally at least one student per team who is capable of doing it in their head, so they can tell the rest of the team, thus speeding the game up and keeping things moving. As things progressed more quickly I found more students willing to come up and try their luck at the sentence because they really wanted to play Janken! Also, try writing 'Do you want me to Janken' on the whiteboard as a visual guide for less able students as they will soon get the idea. One student was so happy that he performed an impromptu dance for the class! 9/10 for this one - enjoy