Apples to Apples

Many of you are probably familiar with this game. Personally, I love it. I love any game that has to do with words. My sophomore year of college, my roommates and other friends and I would play this for loooooong periods of time and not get tired of it.

For those of you not familiar with the game:
In the game that you buy from the store, there are two kinds of cards included: green ones (adjectives) and red ones (nouns- of all kinds). To play the game, each person is dealt five red cards (nouns). Each player takes a turn being the "judge". The "judge" draws a green card from the adjective stack, reads it aloud, and lays it face up on the table. Each player (other than the judge) chooses one card from his or her hand and lays it facedown in the middle of the table, making no comment about which card was played by him or her. The judge then turns over all the cards and chooses the one that he or she thinks best compliments the adjective. This becomes funny when people pick crazy cards that don't normally correlate to a particular adjective. When the judge chooses a noun as the winning card, the person who played that card collects the green adjective card (similar to getting a point). The first person to collect ten green cards wins.

I used this game just the other day when teaching adjectives. They loved it. For that particular class, though, I dealt the teams (I had them play in pairs) green adjective cards, and I put a red noun card down in the middle. It was a success.

If you don't have an Apples to Apples game, it would be pretty easy to recreate: using index cards (or something similar), make stacks of adjectives and nouns (things, places, people, even concepts like "going to grandma's").

Speed Scrabble details

Dear Jaclyn,

Here's what my scrabble set looks like:
A- 9 tiles, worth 1 pt.
B- 2 tiles, worth 3 pts.
C- 2 tiles, worth 3 pts.
D- 4 tiles, worth 2 pts.
E- 10 tiles, worth 1 pt.
F- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
G- 3 tiles, worth 2 pts.
H- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
I- 9 tiles, worth 1 pt.
J- 1 tile, worth 8 pts.
K- 1 tile, worth 5 pts.
L- 4 tiles, worth 1 pt.
M- 2 tiles, worth 3 pts.
N- 6 tiles, worth 1 pt.
O- 8 tiles, worth 1 pt.
P- 2 tiles, worth 3 pts.
Q- 1 tile, worth 10 pts.
R- 6 tiles, worth 1 pt.
S- 4 tiles, worth 1 pt.
T- 6 tiles, worth 1 pt.
U- 4 tiles, worth 1 pt.
V- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
W- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
X- 1 tile, worth 8 pts.
Y- 2 tiles, worth 4 pts.
Z- 1 tile, worth 10 pts.
4 blank tiles

Maybe that will help you. It's based off of a real set of Scrabble tiles.

Love,
Erin

Speed Scrabble

Some call it Speed Scrabble. Some call it Take 2. Either way, it's a pretty good game to play with advanced students.

Supplies:
Set of Scrabble tiles. If you don't have a set of real tiles, you can make them. Paper and pen is the most basic form, of course. A volunteer team that came to work with me made me several sets on those craft, foam sheets.

Rules:
1. Each team starts out with five tiles- facedown.
2. When the game starts, each team turns over their tiles and begins making words with the tiles they have. The first team to use all five tiles says, "Take 2."
3. All teams- whether or not they have used all of their original 5- take 2 more tiles from the pile in the middle.
4. Team now try to use up the tiles they have. They can take apart their original tiles to form different words, if they wish.
5. The game continues until there are no tiles left in the middle.
6. Keep score by counting the points of all the tiles that were used to form words. If teams have tiles leftover, the points on those tiles are subtracted from the score.

Have fun!

Agree to Disagree

This game is good for upper-intermediate to advanced students.

Supplies:
5 signs- Strongly Agree, Somewhat Agree, Neutral, Somewhat Disagree, Strongly Disagree
Arrange chairs into a semi-circle and spread the signs out around the semi-circle.

Be sure that everyone understands what each category means. Explain that you are going to read a statement and that each person should move and stand next to the category that best describes his or her feelings about that statement.

Example statements:
1. Ukraine is the best country to live in.
2. Students should be required to wear uniforms to school.
3. Europeans are better-looking that Americans.

As always, be sensitive to the cultural that you're teaching to. I avoid political statements at all costs. :)