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Unit 3 of the TEFL course textbook emphasizes the importance of engaging students through language exposure, teacher input, communicative tasks, individual language discovery, and access to comfortable environments. Games, especially in younger classrooms, offer an ideal way for students to exercise newfound language skills while remaining engaged and attentive. In accordance with the Engage, Study, Activate method -- which flexibly combines a variety of teaching methodologies -- a number of games have been shown to engage students and direct attention toward newly-acquired language skills. These games include “I Spy,” Slow Pictionary, and Scattergories. As adaptations to my favorite childhood games, these entertaining language activities will be both fun and useful for my elementary-aged students and me. “I Spy” -- characterized by the slogan, “I spy with my little eye” -- offers an interactive way of engaging students before they begin to study certain words and phrases on their own. While the textbook uses the phrase, “I can see something beginning with (...),” I believe the original slogan (“I spy with my little eye”) offers a playful introduction to the concept of rhyming, which may be useful once students reach a certain language level. This game can be used to elicit vocabulary that starts with a certain letter, or that falls within a certain category. For example, after teaching colors to students I might say, “I spy with my little eye something green.” Depending on the classroom, I might ask students to come up with certain words in pairs or in groups of three, or I might call on individual students as ideas come to their mind. This activity is especially fun because, once students start to get a hang of the game, they will be able to prompt vocabulary lists with their own “I spy” sentences. Slow Pictionary also offers a well-known childhood game that can be facilitated by both teacher and student. Using the board, a teacher or student will begin to draw an object, stopping after each stroke. While the object in mind might be up to the teacher or student at any given time, I believe it is useful to choose an object from a list of recently-learned vocabulary. For example, a student might pick the word, “dog,” from a vocabulary list and then proceed to draw it on the board. As students begin to raise their hand to guess the object, the teacher can facilitate who guesses and when. This game is especially useful in that it can directly relate to recently-learned vocabulary, which will help students as they embark on the “study” and “activate” portions of the lesson. Finally, Scattergories offers “competition” as a motivating factor for memorizing new vocabulary. In advance, the teacher lists categories either on a worksheet or on the board. These categories may include “fruit,” “names,” “colors,” “animals,” or -- ideally -- any group related to a previous lesson. Working in pairs or in groups of three, students then come up with a word for each category that begins with a certain letter determined by the teacher. The teacher must make sure that each student gets a turn to speak and scribe, and a bank of words from which to choose may be provided ahead of time. While the textbook suggests that the longest word win each round, I believe elementary-aged students should be awarded one point for each correct answer. Extra points may be awarded for terms that include certain language features discussed in previous lessons. Not only do “I Spy,” Slow Pictionary, and Scattergories offer language-learning adaptations to classic American childhood games, but they also leave room for future adaptations conducive to certain lessons and ages. Within the elementary classroom, these games are especially useful in that they offer a chance to elicit simple vocabulary while enabling young learners to exercise teamwork skills and independence. Having played these games as a child, I am familiar enough with their structure so that I may make further adaptations accordingly. As well-known games, moreover, these language activities introduce elementary-aged students to elements of American culture. As students advance in age and language level, such cultural exposure may lead to better cultural understanding.
