I was scrolling TikTok after a long day of classes recently, and I came across this video from TikTok creator Nick Vogel. The premise of the game is this: he says a category, such as "Name an NFL player" or "Name a drink." He pauses to let viewers think of a response, and then reveals his response. The object of the game is to avoid having the same response that he gives.
Once I liked the video, the algorithm kept sending me more of his videos, which I always paused my scrolling to watch. The game was short and fun, and I loved the interactive premise of the video. Naturally, my teacher brain started thinking, "This would be such a fun, low-prep activity to bring to my students!" So I created a similar activity I could use with my students!
To mix up my normal Thursday routine in which I bring students a joke for "jueves jaja," I started using this game and calling it "jueves a jugar". For the categories, I would use a mixture of current and review vocabulary to keep the game relevant to our course content and objectives. We would start class with this activity, and I would give them a category and then a few seconds to share their response with a partner. Then I would ask students to share some of their responses before I revealed my answer. Anyone with the same response was eliminated and couldn't win the game for that day (but they could still keep playing, of course). I challenged students to see who could avoid getting eliminated as we played each Thursday during the latter half of our semester.
Some things I have loved about using this game:
- It provides a fun context for students to do some retrieval practice by recalling vocabulary that they remember. This practice can help vocabulary "stick" more readily in students' memory.
- There are multiple ways to play this game. For the first couple weeks, I brought the categories and asked students to guess my answer (example 1 above). Later, I chose a student at random to share their answer instead of sharing mine (example 2 above). Of course, you can also do this activity with white boards and have students write their responses. You could also have students create the categories and draw from their ideas. There are many other possibilities, so please share if you have other ways to use this!
- This activity is low-prep, and we all need more of those types of activities in our repertoire! It would only take me a few minutes to create the categories and responses. You could even create the categories on the spot during class or select a category from students' ideas that they've submitted. You could also ask the students to come up with the 5 categories as a class based on what they have been learning recently. They could come up with a few categories that are from your current unit and a few from past units to review.
- While it provides an authentic context for output with vocabulary, it also provides an opportunity for comprehensible and compelling input. For example, some of the questions included vocabulary that we were targeting during our thematic units that semester, such as "equipo deportivo" or "el refrigerador". It also provided a natural context to use words like "algún," "alguna" (some), "alguien" (someone), "algo" (something), etc., which were target vocabulary this semester.
- This is a quick game to play, so it was easy to incorporate with the other content we needed to cover. However, you can certainly extend the activity as well by asking follow-up questions and creating conversation related to the categories or by having students come up with the categories before playing.
- It's easy for students to catch on and play, and if you play once a week, it becomes a fun part of your weekly routine! I have noticed how much my students value routines, and they will let me know if I miss something that is part of our routine! 😂
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