Aim of the Game
The aim of the game is for learners to write sentences about themselves using a given language structure and then find out who wrote which sentences in a competitive mill drill.
Procedure
Explain to learners that they are going to practise the target language by writing sentences about themselves and then sharing them with the rest of the class. Write your example sentences on the board and elicit the target language structure that they have in common.
Give out three strips of paper to each learner and ask them to write a true sentence about themselves using the target language on each strip of paper. Monitor to ensure learners are using the target structure and writing accurate sentences as far as possible.
Once they have written their sentences, ask the learners to fold them in half twice so the sentences are hidden. Collect the folded papers in your hat. If some learners are slow to finish the three sentences, tell them they don’t need to complete all three.
Explain to the learners that now they are going to find out who wrote the sentences. Demonstrate the game by doing two examples. First of all, take one paper out of the hat, unfold it and look at the sentence. Pretend that you wrote it and put it back in the hat, demonstrating to learners that they shouldn’t work with the sentences they wrote themselves. Now take another sentence out of the hat and this time read it out to the class.
Ask them what question you would ask another learner to find out if they had written the sentence (e.g. if the sentence is ‘I’ve met Kylie Minogue’ they would ask ‘Have you ever met Kylie Minogue?’). Ask different learners in the class the elicited question until someone answers yes. Then check that they wrote the sentence. If they didn’t, continue asking other members of the class. If they did, write their name on the paper and pocket it. Then take another sentence from the hat. The process is repeated until all sentences have been taken. Explain to learners that the winner is the person who finds the author of the most sentences. When all the sentences have been taken from the hat, sit down with the hat on to signify the end of the activity.
Conduct feedback on the game. Ask who has the most sentences and ask them to report on the most interesting thing they found out about their classmates. Then ask one or two others to do the same. Finally, feedback on language you heard used during the activity, both correct and incorrect.
Variations
After the main activity is over and the competition is finished. You could ask learners to look again at the sentences they have and ask them to think of a question to ask each author to get more information about the sentence. They then mill again and ask their questions, before you feed back on the content of the activity.
You could run the activity without the competitive element and ask learners to take a moment to ask a follow up question as soon as they discover the author of each sentence.