Genki English Newsletter

Target Grade: Elem 3-adults
Target English: Question & answer practice
Preparation: Pictures of Spiderman, Mary Jane and two enemies

Help Spiderman save Mary Jane from both the Green Goblin and Dr. Octopus!
This game is basically a scoring game which you can mix and match with other games, but the way I present it here is great for question and answer practice!

Preparation

First of all you need A4 print outs of various Spiderman characters. You can easily get these by doing a google image search. You'll need one Mary Jane Watson, and then one Spiderman and villain for each group. One group can be up to around 8 kids. If you have two groups the best pairing is one game as Spiderman 1 vs. the Green Goblin, and the other group as Spiderman 2 vs. Doctor Octopus!


Like in the Banana Tree Game you then prepare the board, this takes about 2 minutes ( or one if you've had practice), so is good to do whilst the kids are doing a warm up game where the teacher isn't involved ( e.g. Harry Potter, Gokiburi etc. )


On the board you need to draw a tall building with several floors ( around 7 or 8 ) and wide enough so that your characters fit. Each teams' Spiderman and villain starts at the ground floor. On top of the building you put the picture of Mary Jane. The idea is the Spidermans will race to the top to save the girl! ( And yeah, I know it's not politically correct but don't blame me, write to Stan Lee!!)


Then you need to split the kids into groups. Either use groups they normally make or use mingle ( http://genkienglish.net/mingle.htm ) and shout out a number, they have to get into groups of that number! Up to 8 people in each group is cool, so for 30 kids you need around 4 groups, but it can work with classes as small as 6 ( 2 groups of 3 ) . All the groups have to have the same number of people.

The Game

1. Each group forms a circle.
2. Each group decides which person in the group will go first.
3. The teacher says "Go!"
4. Simultaneously the first kid in each group asks the person next to them ( clockwise) today's target question. ( e.g. When's your birthday? Where are you going? What's your favourite colour? etc. etc. )
5. This person answers and asks the next person.
6. Keep going round the group until the first person answers the question.
7. Everyone stands up and shouts "Yeah!"
8. The quickest team is the winner.
9. The winner's team's Spiderman moves one floor up the building. And all the other teams' villains move one floor up the building.
10. The person next to the person who started last time starts this time.
11. Repeat from 3
12. Keep going until one Spiderman has saved Mary Jane!!

This game works great, even with older kids and even in Junior High School ( just change the target language to be whatever you are studying). Just the simple fact of having the game based on Spiderman gets the kids hooked!

You should change the question every couple of goes or even introduce a rule that says everyone has to give a different answer, that way they have to listen to what the other people have said!

And remember to teach the Golden Rule: Losing just means it's another chance to try again!

Plus check out the website for an animation of the scoring system and the Japanese version will be on the site this week - great to pass to your teachers to make lesson planning go smoother!
http://genkienglish.net/spiderman.htm