sabato 23 maggio 2015

Teaching for exams? Have fun - A card game to revise

Luckily (or unluckily) it is that time of the year again! Exams!

This year to help my students to revise for their exams I made up a game with a deck of poker cards.

Age: Pre-teens, Teens, Adults
Level: from A2 to B2
What you need: a deck of poker cards/a whiteboard (smart board)

First of all, pre-teach some vocabulary about cards. Show your students the deck of cards and teach them the words suits, hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades, jack, queen, king.



Number of players:
2-20
In small classes (up to 8) players will play individually and you can write the questions on the board depending on their weaknesses and strengths.
I played this game with a class of 20 learners and I paired them up. In this case I used a smart board and the questions appeared on it (the cards where arranged in the same sequence as the questions)

Rules of the game:
Each suit corresponds to a language skill or sub-skill.
Revising for the Cambridge KET for Schools
Learners take turns to turn up a card. 
They will answer a question about a language skill or sub-skill according to the suit they get.
If they answer correctly they will get as many points as the number of suits on the card.
If their answer is wrong, other learners have the chance to get half points on the card if they answer correctly.



If learners pick up KING, they will lose 1 point.
If learners pick up QUEEN, they will double the points of the next question.
If learners pick up JACK, they will miss a turn.

Sample questions for the B1 level


My learners had a whale of a time because they had the chance to revise the topics of the exam without getting bored.
If you try this activity out, please let me know!