Introduction
The first time, I was a mum and I was the first of the group Croissant to organize my game with the kids. My idea was to create a circle with the kids and use the help of the two helpers to present the game with me. The game is like the one in German "Pack dein Koffer" or so.
I choose a word in my mind and a gesture to match with it. Everybody in the circle has to repeat the word and the gesture with me. The following person will have to repeat my word and gesture and add a new word and gesture, which has something to do (in the word field or association of idea ) with the last word.
As an example: I said coffee and made the gesture of a cup. Everybody in the circle repeat the word coffee and the gesture. The person on my right repeats coffee and my "cup gesture" and goes on with another word liked to it.
The second session, I was not a mum anymore and I played my game during the last time session.
Target group and time
The group was composed of 5 pupils: 3 boys and two girls and two helpers. The kids are in the 5. grade. I would say that one of the boys was a "leader" and wanted to talk and participate lot and one of the girls was really shy and didn't dare asking for words as much as the others.
During the second session with the kids, the group was made of 4 pupils (2 boys - 2 girls). I thought that their level in English was much better than last week. They knew a lot of vocabulary and understood the idea of word field much better.
Learning objectives
The goals are:
- to make the kids move
- to create associations of ideas between different words, which are usually not put together
- to help the kids remembering new words
- create creative movements
- develop kin-aesthetic memory
Instructions to set up the activity
When someone is saying a word, he has to do a gesture which represents the word according to him. Everybody has to repeat after him and make the gesture with him. When the person after the last one in the circle is talking, she has to say the last word, do the gesture and say a new word with a new gesture. The words have to be linked with each other.
For example:
- I say coffee and make a gesture representing a cup of coffee
- everyone in the circle repeat the word and gesture together
- the next one repeats the word and gesture
- he adds a new word and gesture
- everybody repeats
- and so on until each person in the circle had said something.
Letting it run
During the first week, the kids played but I guess that they didn't really understood the game or I didn't explain it well enough. They were just repeating words after words and they which were not linked with each other. I guess they were just saying what they had in their mind at that moment (like football- handball-school-boxing-ice cream).
I think that I should make some new rules next time like a circle with a word field about blue things, or about vegetable, or about school stuffs, so that they understand the association of ideas better.
I was a bit disappointed but I will have another try next time!
The second time was much better: I improve my attitudes towards the game and explanations giving. The pupils were also better in English and understood immediately the goal of the game.
I made three different levels beginning to the easiest to the hardest. In the first level, the world field was given and it was animals. The movements were really creatives and easy to remember (like saying cat and going on the ground saying "miaow"). According to me, this level was easy for them because they could easily remember the movements. They learned a few new words like squirrel or snail.
The second level was with the word field of ice cream flavors. According to me, this level was a little bit harder because of the gestures. the gestures were really hard to create and remember. (How can you find a different gesture for chocolate or vanilla or caramel for example? )
The last level was without giving them a word field at all. We were just using the words associations with what we had in mind at the moment. This pupils understood perfectly and said words which were linked to each others.
I think that an important difference was also that they were only 4 pupils and with the 2 helpers and me we were also able to help quickly if that was necessary.
Something that I also add because I saw that the kids were really good at the game was repeating alone at the end. At the end of each level, I picked one or two pupils to repeat the whole words and gestures and that went really well.
