Circle the Word Game
Minefields

Kawaiso chugakusei! Not only must they learn grammar, grammar, and more grammar in the often stale classroom environment, but often they are required to memorise the text as well. This activity makes memorisation more fun. Each row is a team; words from the text are written on the blackboard. Read the text aloud, occasionally saying 'Blank' in place of a word. One student from each row races to the board and circles the word you 'Blanked'. First to do so scores their team a point.

Before the class, go through the target text and circle important words. If you are covering one page of text, circle one word in every sentence, but for more use every other sentence or you'll spend too much time on this. When you write your words on the board, write as many copies of the same words as there are groups so that slower students have to get out of their seats and circle something. You might want to add a few red herring words to make the activity more challenging for better students. Different tenses, wacky words, words with slight spelling aberrations, all can add to the mayhem of learning and enjoying it.

Hints and cautions:

* Have the class conduct this activity with closed books, unless they are especially slow.

* Write your target words on one sheet of paper and your herrings on another. give one of the sheets to the JTE, so that both of you can write the words on the board in a very random manner; upside down, if either of you can manage it, is good too.

* Encourage the assistance of teammates by teammates. This prevents taunting of slower S/s, and permits the better S/s to reinforce their knowledge and understanding by teaching.

+ Circling the correct word scores a point, but circling the wrong word is minus one point. This is a necessary deterrent for those clowns who don't know the answer and circle anything.

+ It takes time to write all the words on the board, so either write the words there before the class, or write them while the JTE is instructing the class in the grammar point or helping them review the text relevant to your selected words.

* Use different coloured chalk for each team, if possible, or at least as many different colours, coupled with shapes (blue circle and blue square), as possible.

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