For this game you should draw a grid on the board as below:
Easy Difficult
100 | 200 | 300 | 400 | |
Body/Health | ||||
Numbers | ||||
Art/Entertainment | ||||
Places | ||||
Sport | ||||
Verbs |
Simply divide the students into teams and tell them 100 is the easiest type of question, 200 is a bit harder, 300 harder still and 400 the most difficult. They get to pick the subject-matter and level that suits them best. They can try and get more points with a ‘400’ question but run the risk of getting no points at all if it’s too hard. As teams choose a topic/points-level mark off that square with an X so that it cannot be used again. As ever, keep track of the score on the board.
Here are some typical questions you might use for the above categories. I tend to ask students to name a certain number of things because then you can just adjust it as needed e.g. ‘Name 3 winter-sports’ for a ‘100’ question but ‘Name 6 winter-sports’ for a ‘400’ question. Some of these questions are very simple but depend on the students knowing certain words and understanding you as you speak (don’t repeat it or write it on the board unless you really want to)
Body/Health
Name 5 parts of the hand
Name 3 serious diseases
Name 4 medical jobs
Numbers
What’s 48 divided by 6?
How many people in a football team?
How many thumbs in this room?
Art/Entertainment
Name 5 people who work on a movie
Name 3 wind instruments
Name 4 things you can use to draw or paint
Places
Name 5 capital cities in Europe
Name 3 famous mountain ranges
What’s the longest river in the world?
Sport
Name 4 places where sports are played
Name 5 fighting sports
What is a referee?
Verbs
Name 10 things you can do with your body
What’s the past tense of ‘fly’?
Name 5 verbs connected with school
The idea is to practise and learn English vocabulary of course so an entertainment question should be about types of movie rather than who won the Oscar this year, and a sports question should be about sporting equipment rather than who plays for Barcelona.
You can of course use other topics. Ones I’ve attempted include Animals & Nature (‘Name 6 insects’), Brands (‘Name 10 things sold in Macdonald’s’) The Home ('Name 6 things in the house starting with 'C'') Food & Drink ('What's a pizza made of?') and Nouns (‘What’s the noun of ‘think’?’)
Another version I sometimes do is with continents: as in this illustration
100 | 200 | 300 | 400 | |
Rest of the World |
Here the questions might be similar but with a continent-specific slant. e.g. name four famous scientists from Europe, five famous American sportsmen, ten Asian companies, five capital cities in South America , etc
