Blockbusters: a TV quiz show game in the classroom

Draw a 5 x 5 grid on the board and fill it with all the letters of the alphabet, except X, in random order, as in the diagram above. Divide students into 2 teams and write an A and a horizontal arrow at the left side of the grid to indicate that Team A are going across, a B and a downwards-facing arrow at the top to indicate that Team B are going down.

Team A have to get a horizontal line across e.g. U-J-A-T-E to win. Team B have to get a vertical line down to win. They will of course get in each other’s way as they do this so it doesn’t have to be a straight line; it just has to be connected e.g. Team A could go U-J-I-P-H-Q-G. (The connected squares must be above, below or to the side, not in a diagonal relationship to each other)

Team A picks a letter. They would usually start in the furthest left column but they can begin anywhere they like. The teacher just has to think of a word beginning with that letter and a short and simple way to explain it.

For A you might think of ‘artist’ and say ‘for example, Picasso’. 

For F you might think of ‘forty’ and say ’20 + 20’.

For K you might think of ‘king’ and say ‘the queen’s husband’.

In the grid above, imagine Team A has picked ‘F’ and the teacher has said ‘it’s a sport’. Either team can answer. It’s simply a matter of the first person to shout it out. If team A says ‘football’ first, they win and get to pick the next letter- logically ‘B’ for them. If Team B wins they get to pick the next letter – logically ‘V’ for them as they work their way down. However, as before, with each new question, either team can answer and change the direction of the game.

If students don’t get an answer immediately keep giving further clues or even start spelling it out on the board. If it’s too hard for them, then change to another easier word starting with that letter. If it’s too easy and students are flying through the game too quickly throw in a long, hard word or give cryptic explanations for simple words. One of my favourites for ‘V’ is ‘Everyone has one, though you can’t see it’ (Answer: Voice)

As you go along, the teacher must fill in the squares to show each team’s progression, e.g. with an ‘X’ over the letter. If possible use different coloured markers; if not indicate the difference in teams by a different pattern in each square e.g. Xs vs. Os. Continue like this until one team has made a fully connected line, however convoluted, all the way across or down.

Though of course the scope is endless and it’s easy just to think of words as you go along, you want to avoid words that are hard to explain like ‘make’ or ‘truth’ or ‘since’ or ‘only’. Simple action verbs and concrete nouns are best. Here are some suggestions

For young children

A artist, alphabet, alien, actor, arm

B bottle, bird, book, banana, bus, blue

C clock, chair, camera, cheese, China

D dog, donut, door, doll, doctor, dance

E egg, exit, English, end

F football, forty, film, finger

G glass, good, green, game

H helicopter, hamburger, heavy, hat

I ice cream, island, Italy, iguana

J jeans, jug, Japan, jam

K king, kangaroo, key, knife

L love, lion, London, letter, laugh

M man, monster, microwave, mouse

N newspaper, notebook, name, ninety

O octopus, orange, office, owl

P pen, plate, pizza, policeman, picture, poster

Q question, quiet, quick, quarter

R Russia, radio, robot, run

S ship, sandwich, swim, sing, star, shop

T TV, tape, train, tree, tea, teeth

U umbrella, under, USA, up

V van, video, vase, Venezuela

W watch, window, wall, white

Y yogurt, young, yellow, yesterday

Z zoom, zebra, zoo, zero

A bit more advanced

A action, architect, active, advise

B bush, bench, blind, blow

C ceiling, confused, custom, cheat

D director, deaf, disabled, describe

E elbow, entrance, enemy, enough

F fence, foreign, fascinating, force

G gain, government, guard, generous

H honest, hobby, huge, hug

I improve, ill, immediately, increase

J jealous, join, judge, journey

K knock, keen, knowledge, kit

L Liverpool, legal, loose, luxury

M Monaco, maximum, murder, mystery

N necessary, nasty, Norwegian, notice

O obvious, order, organisation, original

P Paraguay, point, prefer, proud

Q quiz, quite, quantity, Qatar

R reduce, relative, rescue, refuse

S sci-fi, security, shelter, situation

T teapot, tobacco, trade, temporary

U united, urgent, unique, university

V voice, victory, vegetarian, violent

W wise, wonder, weak, waist

Y youth, Yemen, yacht, yak

Z Zaire, Zookeeper, zone, zodiac

Column Game- Countries

COUNTRY	Capital	Language	Currency	Famous Person	Food/ Drink	Popular Sport
Spain	Madrid	Spanish	Euro	Antonio Banderas	Paella	Football
China	Beijing	Chinese	Yuan	Mao	Dim sum	Table Tennis
USA	Washing-ton D.C.	English	Dollar	Obama	Steak	Baseball
Germany	Berlin	German	Euro	Hitler	Sausage	Football
France	Paris	French	Euro	Napoleon	Cheese	Rugby

Another column game you can play, based on the same principal described in the previous post, is ‘Countries’ – see image above.

For this the main categories would be things like language, capital, currency, brand, food, sport, famous person.

You can also add or sub-divide into things like famous leader, famous sportsperson, famous dead person, movie, other town (apart from the capital), landmark and so on.

You play just by adding a new country (one relevant to the students’ range of knowledge) in the left-hand column with each round.

If your students come up with any answers you don’t know – for example a Korean pop star you’ve never heard of- just check with the other team and ask them to confirm it’s a bona fide answer. 

Categories in Columns

Draw a table on your whiteboard with 6-8 columns and put categories (e.g. food, animal, country) at the head of each column. Write a letter at the side and explain to the students that they have to think of a word for each column starting with that letter. Do one example on the board to get started e.g for A, write apple, ant, Australia etc.

The image above shows how the game might look if you played it for a very long time on a very large whiteboard. It's a bit small so here's an enlargement of part of it:

The categories shown are the most obvious, easy-to-complete ones. You can use other categories instead (see the many options in my previous post) but you want to make sure it’s something that actually has an answer for most letters. As you can see from the gaps in the picture even some ‘easy’ categories are hard to fill in for some letters, and you can forget the letter X altogether of course.

Students work in teams and shout out when they have finished for one letter. You check their spelling and award a point if everything is correct, keeping track of the score on the board. If they have trouble completing the full line then you can either tell them the first team to get 5 or 6 or 7 out of the 8 columns wins, or stop the game after, say, three minutes and count who has the most words. 

You don’t have to go in alphabetical order, of course. I usually alternate between an easy letter like M or S or T and a harder letter like F or J or Y so that the rhythm of the game varies.

Variation

You can also play this game the other way round, with letters- usually easy ones- at the top and categories added round-by-round at the side. See illustration below.

	B	C	M	S	T	W
Animal	Bee	Cat	Moose	Snake	Tiger	Whale
Country	Belgium	China	Malaysia	Sweden	Thailand	Wales
Job	Butcher	Carpenter	Mechanic	Soldier	Teacher	Writer
Part of the Body	Back	Chin	Mouth	Stomach	Toe	Wrist
Verb	Break	Cut	Make	Stop	Take	Wait

Abbreviations

s.t = something

6 Simple Category Games

The Go-Round-The-Class Game

Pick a category, and simply tell students they must say one word in that category, quickly going round (and round) the class from student to student. Keep up the speed by counting down 3-2-1 with your fingers in front of them. They lose if they can’t say a word within a few seconds or if they repeat a word. If you want, you can also do it in alphabetical order.

Team Tennis

Same as above, except the students form two teams and say words in a category back and forth like a game of tennis until one repeats or runs out of ideas.  

Name Five Things

Simply write a category on the whiteboard and the first team to write five examples, spelled correctly, wins. Use harder categories for this game; animals, food etc is too easy when all they have to do is come up with five.

Three-Minute Speed-Write

Write a category on the whiteboard and with your mobile phone’s stopwatch count to three minutes. The team with the most words at the end, spelled correctly, wins.

Ascending Letter-Count

Draw a grid on the board – multiple columns with the first column named ‘number of letters’.  Under this write 3, 4 etc until 8, 9 or 10, depending on the student level. Write a category at the top of the next column along- e.g. animals. Students (in teams) must write a word in that group with the right number of letters e.g. ant(3), bird(4), whale(5), rabbit (6), penguin(7), elephant(8). Repeat with different categories, only writing in the category name at the start of each round. The winner is whoever finishes first or gets the furthest after two minutes.

20-Second Speed-Talk

Divide the students into teams and give each team 20 seconds to name 10 countries, 10 drinks, 10 vehicles, etc. When they complete that, move on to round 2: the same thing in 16 seconds (then 12,8,4 seconds for further rounds). Use a stopwatch. The game gets more and more urgent and exciting and you’ll be surprised how fast you can make students talk. Use easy categories; the point is just to see if the students can get the words out of their mouths fast enough. If they can’t complete the task the first time, then go again with a different category. Team A might advance to round 2 while Team B has to repeat round 1 but then Team B might catch up later on. Keep track of all this on the board. If they’re still having trouble or if they’re young kids, reduce it to 8 or 6 or 5 words in the allotted time.

Categories to use in TEFL Games

I've been teaching English on and off since 1990, for a total of about 11 years, and have built up quite a stock of TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) games and activities. Now I’ve finally figured I should put them online. This first post is just the preliminary groundwork; any English teacher should be very familiar with this type of 'category thinking'. The actual games and activities will come soon.

Basic categories (can be used with even the youngest students)

Animals

Colours

Countries

Family members

Food and drink

Jobs

Parts of the body

Places in a town (eg cinema, school. Not brand names)

Sports

Things in the house

Things you can wear

For very young learners you could also use Months and Days of the Week, which are obviously limited categories, so not suitable for every game, but can sometimes be useful.

Further categories or sub-divisions – suitable for teenagers up

Brand names

Cities

Drinks

Flying animals

Fruits

Land animals

Languages

Musical instruments

Nationalities

School subjects

Sea animals

Things in the bedroom/bathroom/living room/kitchen

Vegetables

Vehicles

Other Categories

4 wheel vehicles (car, jeep, taxi, van)

Adjectives beginning with A,B,C etc

Adjectives to describe food

Adjectives to describe weather

African countries

Animals beginning with A,B,C etc

Animals which don’t have a tail

Asian Languages

British football teams

Cities in the Southern Hemisphere

Cities in the USA

Clothes for cold weather

Countries which are very cold

Countries which call their currency dollars (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore)

Countries which have won the (Soccer) World Cup

Countries which speak Arabic

Countries which speak Spanish

Crimes

Currencies

Electrical Things in the kitchen

European capital cities

Famous Black Americans

Famous dead people

Famous Mountain Ranges

Famous Rivers

Foods which you never eat on their own (ketchup, salt, pepper, sugar, olive oil)

Geographical Features (cliff, valley, cave, lake, river, volcano etc)

Insects

Landmarks in Asia (Angkor Wat, Great Wall, Taj Mahal, Wailing Wall, Borobudur)

Landmarks in Europe (Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Colosseum, Berlin Wall, Stone Henge)

Languages that don’t end in  -ish, -ian or –ese (French, German, Icelandic, Latin, Korean)

Liquids which are not drinks (petrol, washing-up liquid, sea water, shampoo, hairspray)

Major sporting events (Football World Cup, Wimbledon, Olympics, Superbowl, Kentucky Derby)

Parts of the arm (including the hand)

Parts of the leg (including the foot)

Planets

Popular sports in the USA

Religions

Reptiles

Shapes

Sharp things

South American countries

String Instruments

Things – not animals- which can fly (plane, helicopter, balloon, rocket, space shuttle)

Things made of glass

Things which always come in pairs (headphones, shorts, glasses, tights, shoes)

Things which are always green

Things which are always red

Things which are round

Things which are square

Things which can melt

Things with handles

Things you find in the bathroom

Things you turn on and off

Types of Movie

Types of Music

Verbs beginning with A,B,C etc

Very small animals which are not insects (snail, worm, spider, scorpion, shrimp )

Water Sports

Ways to cook food (stir-fry, boil, barbecue, roast, poach)

Western Holidays (Easter, Christmas, May Day, Thanksgiving, Halloween)

Words ending in A,B,C etc