War of the Scenes (B1/B2 Listening and Speaking)


 War of the Scenes

Zoltán Radics

Part 1: The Game

Level & Learning Outcomes

The aim of this game is to improve the lexical knowledge and communication skills of B1-B2 level of students. The game helps students practice the words they already know in different contexts and with different topics. 

Materials needed 

  • boardmarker or chalk


Object of Game

To get the most points for your team .

Rules of Play

  1. The teacher divides the students into 3-4 groups

  2. The teacher writes words on the board connected to a topic (in this case: the topic was home and home objects)

  3. The teams have to write a short scene using as many words as possible from the board with as much creativity as possible

  4. The teams act out their written scenes + they also have to narrate the context for the scenes (e.g.: “We are in the kitchen. Michael and John are arguing. Micael: - I can’t believe you use a fork to eat soup! etc.)

  5. The other 2 or 3 teams will rate the team and give them points from 1-10.

    1. The points depend on the number of the words used from the board and the creativity of the scene (naturally, the better the team can act it out, the more likely that they’ll get more points)

    2. It is important that the rating teams don’t say the points they gave. They only write it down and show it to the teacher


Scorekeeping

The teacher writes down the points for each team and at the end of the game, he presents the final scores and the winner. 


Part 2: Reflection

During the preparation of this game, I had to work around the fact that the classroom where I was going to hold this class did not have a sufficient speaker, which meant that I needed to make a game that didn’t require any kind of technology. I decided that I wanted to focus on the students’ writing and communication skills instead and this game allowed me to do just that. Coming up with the idea however, was not easy, but I was inspired by a game we played in one of our classes where we had to present a movie to our peers (Movie Monarch). I decided that instead of presenting an already existing movie, the students can make a “scene” from a movie but I’ve quickly abandoned that notion and went with the idea that would also require them to practice particular words as well. This led me to the final version of the game where I would write words on the board and have the students make a scene using those words but in order to make it more fun and engaging (and to practice their communication skills as well), the students would have to act out their scene as well.

The presentation of the game went surprisingly well. I have been teaching history to 12 graders and I have managed to convince their English teacher to let me hold a class with them, so after a brief introduction (because there were students there from other classes and not just the class that I’d been teaching), I began to explain the game to them and they understood it immediately. They are at around B1 and B2 level and they did not have any problems with the words given. The game went down surprisingly well and I can proudly say that most of them actually enjoyed it (including me). As I have stated, the aim of this game was to practice the given words and through discussions and “presentations”, the students had to creatively use the given words and act out a scene that was convincing to their audience as well.

I think that the “acting” aspect motivated my students to do the task and learn English because the creation of the scene was amplified by the fact that they had to present it. I also think that this way, every member of the team was working because almost all of the teams divided themselves into “script writers” and “actors” without me telling them to do so. The scenarios they came up with were also fun and interesting. One team used words to convey a drama scene while another used them to present a robbery and the third acted out a murder mystery, which was extremely fun for me (the robbery scene won of course).


Part 3 Appendix

Appendix A: Word List


Rooms

Objects

Living room

Knife

Bathroom

Pen

Dining room

TV

Kitchen

Washing machine

Work office

Desk

Garden

Flowers


Fork


Papers


Sofa


Chair


Rose


Mirror


Shower


Plate


Glass


Computer

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