A life saving football board game template you must have.
ESL communicative football game template Download
Skills to practice:
Practice almost any grammar, vocabulary and sentence structures skill with this game communicatively.
Advantage: This game puts students at the center of learning, not the teacher. It saves a teacher time and energy, while helping students to do meaningful language practice.
Class Levels: Adaptable for all levels of students and all class sizes.
Requirements: Cut out the game equipment below.
Summary: Students make sentences and one team asks questions based on the sentence of the other team. For example Team A says: My name is Peter. Team B Asks a question based on that fact: What’s your name?
Time: This can take from 40 minutes to 1 hour or more. For classes with only 1 academic hour (40 mins.), you can use one lesson to build sentences and next lesson use the sentences to play the game.
How to play:
- (for a smart class) Print out copies of the TEAM A and TEAM B fact sheets and hand them out to the two teams respectively. They use these sheets to write many non-question sentences. For example of non-question sentence is: My name is Peter. NOT. What’s your name? (Note a variation can be the other way round)
- (for mixed ability and slow classes) Fill in 16 spaces of the fact sheets with at least two words on each space that students are going to use to make sentences with. Team A and Team B should have different words on their fact sheets. The idea is to get each team to build different sentences. For example Team A two words for space 1 can be NAME, JOHN.
This team can use NAME and JOHN to make a simple non-question sentence like. My name is John.
- After building sentences with these words, the teams are ready for the game.
- You must have cut out the team players from the game equipment below. Use blue tag to stick each player on their side.
- Toss a coin to see who starts reading their sentence. The team that looses the coin tossing has to start reading out their sentences to the other team. The other team listens to the sentence and tries to make a question out of it. For example Team A says: I am ten years old. Team B will ask a question: How old are you?
- When the other team successfully builds a question based in the fact (sentence) of the other team, they can advance by one space.
- Each team has three chances to make a correct question each time. If the questions are VERY wrong all three times, they get a yellow card ( A yellow card means they do not advance, but loose a turn). Six yellow cards equal 1 red card. One red card means the team goes back by two spaces. Note that I said VERY wrong earlier. Forgive minor mistakes. The idea is to get them talking. Also red cards are just a scare tactic. Avoid using red cards as much as possible. Help losing teams by starting the question for them. This gives them hope and keeps the fun. Usually the best games are those where both teams are at close range.
- Also note that this game gets more interesting towards the end.
- If both teams exhaust their 16 sentences, give them time to create more sentences. Encourage them to make difficult sentences that their opponents would have a hard time making questions out of.
- After number 15, space on the board game, they need one last question to drive the ball into the goal. If it is correct they win and get the trophy.
- To make it more exciting, give each team a country name according to the football flags below.
Variations:
As I mentioned earlier, this is an adaptable game and all kinds of variations are possible. You can create new rules as time goes on.
- One variation is, instead of making sentences they simple do Q and A-Question and Answer
- It is possible to focus questions so as to practice a particular grammar or vocabulary points.
Variations:
As I mentioned earlier, this is an adaptable game and all kinds of variations are possible. You can create new rules as time goes on.
- One variation is, instead of making sentences they simple do Q and A-Question and Answer
- It is possible to focus questions so as to practice a particular grammar or vocabulary points.
Weakness: As with most games, the start is not always easy. Students (especially kids) might tend to feel sad if they loose. Prepare some other type of reward for the losing team, like a silver medal while telling them of the possibility of winning a next match. Also a good match is one that ends with a draw. To end the match in a draw, set a time limit that you know both teams won’t win by then. That way the score is 1 all or zero all.
Tips for large classes:This game is a board game, but can also be played in a large class. Photocopy the game on an A3 or larger paper size, or project in on a projector if your class has one. Use blue tag to stick team players as they advanced.
