thoughtjunkie

Requested by my good friend Kris, here's the rundown for my Magic: the Gathering inspired game (yes, I realize exactly how nerdy that sounds), for 5th/6th grade EFL students. I prototyped the game today with my 5th and 6th grade class, and was STAGGERED by how well it worked. They used English-- a LOT of English-- in varying ways: drawing the sentences to show understanding, writing the sentences out to practice forming the letters, and of course reading the sentences aloud. Both classes were disappointed when they had to leave. My 5th graders, I had to force out by picking up the cards, and the 6th graders stayed 20 minutes after to continue playing.

Play isn't a waste of time-- what an absurd medieval idea! Play is just learning married with fun.

This entry is simulcast on my Livejournal: floraldeoderant

The Basic Game Rules:
-Each player starts with 5 cards in his or her hand.

-Each card has a word on it-- mostly nouns and verbs, though there are a few adjectives and adverbs. Articles etc, are not in the game as cards: we will get to that in a moment.

-The objective of the game is to move your piece along a gameboard till the end.

-You move your piece by making sentences with the cards in your hand. After you make a sentence, you roll a 6-sided die. You move that many steps ahead.

-You add 1 additional step for every word beyond two your sentence contains. If you roll a 4, and have a three word sentence, you move your piece 5 steps ahead. Four word sentence is +2, etc.

-Every time you make a sentence, you draw that many cards.

-7 is the most cards a player can have in his or her hand. If a player has more than 7 cards in hand at the end of his or her turn, that player loses cards, down to 7.

-Used or lost cards go into a discard pile face-up.

-If a player can't play on his or her turn, that player loses a card then draws a card (of his or her choice) until he or she can play. Then, that player's turn resumes as normal.

-If the draw pile runs out, shuffle the discard pile and it becomes the new draw pile.

-Roll a die at the start of the game to see who plays first. Then, the game proceeds in a clockwise rotation.

Card Abilities:
-Many cards have different abilities on them.

-Cards with abilities have either an 'and' or an 'or' written on them as well.

-An 'and' card uses the ability whenever you use that word in a sentence. These abilities are relatively weak. As you can see in the examples below, the card names are also related to their abilities. Run makes you go a little faster, sleepy makes someone sleep through their turn, dice uses dice, etc.








-'Or' cards can be used either in a sentence, OR (confusing, I know) for their abilities. Their abilities are usually very strong. Note that unlike making a sentence, a card used for its 'or' ability does not replace itself unless otherwise specified.

Universal Cards:
-There are 3 universal cards in the game: Draw, Write, Act. These cards are in the deck, just like any other.



-When a player draws one of these cards, he or she plays it immediately and draws another card, then proceeds with his or her turn as normal.

-If any of the Universal Cards is in play, then any time any player makes a sentence, they must follow the Universal Card's instructions. Draw-- he or she must draw a picture of his or her sentence (linking words to meaning). Write-- he or she must re-write the sentence (writing practice). Act-- he or she must act out the sentence, somehow (again, linking words to meaning, but via a different strategy).

-Whenever a Universal Card is played, it replaces the last one (replaced Universal Cards go into the discard pile).

-Every time a student makes a sentence, he or she must read it aloud, regardless of which Universal Card is in play.


*****

That is essentially the game. It seems like it'll be great for vocabulary building, as well as word-recognition and basic grammatical structure. My theory is, review only sucks if you know it's review. If it's a cool game, then all that pressure that normally drives things like word recognition out of one's mind, evaporates.

The other thing is, just in the spirit of M:tG, I can add expansions. I can add cards that change the rules (my idea for conditionals: there are "if" cards and ", then" cards. One by itself is more or less useless, but if you get one of each, you can make one really massive sentence and rack up those bonus points. "If/ the blue/ man/ runs/, then/ we/ kill/ him." = 6 + Die roll. For this lesson, the basic hand-size would have to be expanded to 8, with a max hand of 10 or 11.

Depending on level or lesson, the basic rules can just be modified (flooding the deck with articles, for example, would just be annoying). Instead, every time you make a sentence, you have to say (or write) it with the correct articles, or you get -2 on your dice roll.

The rules of the game change with the cards, and are infinitely modifiable for any lesson.

***

If anyone who stumbles across this would like to try it, just post a comment request for my supplies. I can email the cards I have created in microsoft publisher (the prototype cards look different from the pictures above) or excel formats. You have to provide your own gameboard, pieces, and 1 six-sided die.

I can also email you a blank template, so you can make your own cards, for your own lessons. As you can see, I keep them color-coded for ease of use (nouns are blue, verbs red, adjectives yellow) but if that's too easy for your class, you can print the cards all in white. Please share any new cards, rule ideas, or success/failure stories!

*One pitfall this game runs into: Obviously it's complicated right at the start (much more complicated to explain than to play, actually). You basically need a coteacher with you to translate, the very first time. Then, once the students get the hang of it you won't need teh translator.

**As with most lessons, your students will need your help-- more at the start, and less as things go along (yay! progress!). On days without my coteacher, I open two tabs in Google's translator (I like google translator because it's decent and it translates as you type)-- one tab for English->Korean, and the other Korean->English. My students can ask questions, and I can answer them effectively. If my sentence is complex, I also like to translate English->Korean, and then back again to make sure it's meaning was preserved.

Cheers,
Christian