Learning through games (2)

TICS are very useful for learning languages. However, they are not common in schools, especially in public schools. That is why games are a nice alternative. 


There are common games such as hangman, pictionary, mimics, or the forbidden word which can be used as post-treatment activities in any text to reinforce the vocabulary. 


HANGMAN:

The students can play this game by using the new words of a text, so to learn their spelling. 


This game has a virtual option: http://www.hangman.no/. In this webpage, the teacher can even make a list of words and  give the code to the students so that they practice. 




PICTIONARY:


This well-known game consists on guessing words from a drawing. If the class is divided into teams, the students get really competitive and involved in the game.  The blackboard is divided into as many parts as teams are, there is a person drawing for each team. The teacher has a set of words written in small pieces of paper that the person who is going to draw chooses.The person who is drawing changes so that everybody participates.


This game can be used as post-treatment activity to review the vocabulary, or as a pre-treatment activity so that the students learn new vocabulary and/or to introduce and guesswhat the story that is going to be read is about by using key words. 




MIMICS:


Using mimics to guess words or sentences can be very funny and motivating for students. This game is very similar to the pictionary, but instead of playing all at the same time, they will have to play in turns. It can also be used to guess a scene from a piece of literature that has been read, so that they review what the text is about.




THE FORBIDDEN WORD:
Students will have to guess a concept or a scene from a description that one of their peers does. However, the student describing the word or scene cannot say one or several words, so to make it more difficult.