Entries from July 2007 ↓

This activity can be used to fill a whole 3 hours of a final class, or as a filler some time mid-term over a couple of weeks. It’s based on a couple of episodes of the US sitcom “Friends”, and the material can be adapted to suit both listening/speaking and reading/writing classes. You’ll need to download the Student sheets and the Teacher sheets below.

Friends teacher sheets Friends student sheets

If you haven’t already come across them, there are some nice Let’s Talk publisher materials available online. In particular, the review board games are a nice chance to look back on what has been covered in class. The board games are in the binder, in share files and at:

http://www.cambridge.org/elt/letstalk/support/games/

The publisher instructions on how to play the game are below. If you haven’t got a dice, you could get the students to use the “janken” dice method patented by Hans. To determine how many spaces the first player moves across the board, two players use the janken method. However, instead of indicating “rock”, “scissors” or “paper”, the two players hold out between zero and three fingers. The first player moves forward by the number of fingers simultaneously held out by both players (e.g. 3+1).

Publisher instructions:

Procedure: Divide the class into groups of four students. Give each group one game board, one die, and four tokens.

Position all the students’ tokens on the square marked “Start.” The first student to play rolls the die. His or her token advances the number of squares indicated on the die. If the square asks a question or requests information, the student should answer the question or provide the necessary information. There are no right or wrong answers. Students should be encouraged to give thoughtful, complete answers.

If a token lands in a square at the bottom of a ladder, it immediately advances to the top of the ladder, where the student should respond to the question or request in that square. If a token lands in a square that contains the head of a snake, it slides back to the square at the tail of the snake. (The token makes no extra move if it lands on a square at the top of a ladder or on the tail of a snake.)

If a token moves to a square that does not have a question or request, the student gets to stay on the square without answering a question or giving information.

After the first student completes his or her turn, the other students roll the die in turn. The first student to reach the square marked “Finish” is the winner.

Option: As a bonus for answers that show creativity, thoughtfulness, or extra effort, you (or other players) can choose to advance a player an agreed-upon number of squares.