Introduction
"Everybody who … " requires quick reactions of students and is thus a good warm up or wake up game. It nevertheless involves verbal utterances and allows an easy-going practice of simple grammatical structures (3rd person-s and negation).
The makeup of the game can easily be adjusted to match different needs; it can be added on to (e.g. to make students form longer sentences) or be turned in a primarily scenic exercise (e.g. substitute more words for gestures and pantomime).
Classroom setup: Circle of chairs. One chair per student minus one (one student stands in the middle of the circle)
Target group and Time
Since the game can be played in various versions, the target groups can be divers. Broadly, the game might best fit for students between grade 3-6. The game can be played for around 5-15 minutes, either at the beginning of a class as a warm up, or after a long sitting session as a shake-up activity.
Learning objectives
Learning objectives are to practice 3rd person -s (pl.) and negation ("likes"/"doesn't like") by forming sentences following the pattern "Everybody who likes … get up!"/"Everybody who doesn't like … get up!" The aim is to make students feel comfortable forming full sentences involving these grammatical elements.
Instructions to set up the activity
Students sit in a circle on chairs, teacher stands in the middle.
For the general approach to the game, tell students that we all have things that we like and that we don't like. Give an example of yourself, e.g. "I like Pizza." and ask students "Who of you also likes Pizza? Everybody who likes Pizza raise their hand!"
Ask several students what they like and then ask the remaining students who also likes these things. In this way, students can hear the correct grammatical forms from their teacher several times and already feel actively involved as they think about things that they like.
Then tell them that there are of course things that we don't like/that we hate. Go through the same process; give an example of yourself, ask "Everybody who doesn't like …" to raise their hand and let some students come up with examples of their own.
To continue, tell students that the upcoming game will be quick and that they will have to react fast. The person standing in the middle (so you say, pointing at yourself) will always say the same phrase or sentence; namely "Everybody who likes …" or "Everybody who doesn't like …" and then name the thing they like or hate. And everybody to whom this applies as well will have to get up and quickly find a new place to sit, while one person will be left standing in the middle to continue.
Do one exemplary round.
How to play:
1) Play this version for a while. If students form the sentence incorrectly, correct them and make sure they have another turn to try it out. You might also remind them that they should not only use the positive "likes" but the negative "doesn't like" as well (this depends on the learner group – if students feel relatively confident with the grammatical structure, they easily go for both forms, but weaker students tend to stick to the simple version of "likes" and avoid the more complex "doesn't like").
2) When things have been running smoothly for a while, stop the game and explain, that things will become a bit more challenging now. The next level is to substitute the things that they like or don't like with a movement of pantomime which represents them (e.g. kicking a ball, making swimming movements etc.) Tell them that they will need to act these things out with very big and clear movements to make sure, everybody in the circle can see what they are doing.
3) Depending on the length and level of the game, you can then go even one step further by exchanging the words "like" and "doesn't like" for a positive and a negative gesture (e.g. "likes" = thumbs up, "doesn't like" = outstretched hand to signal 'stop' plus shaking head). Students will now have to be even more precise in their movements to make sure the 'grammatical' gesture will be distinguishable from the thing itself.
4) If students feel up to it, the levels can be increased until no word is spoken and everything is acted out.
Letting it run
As mentioned above, the game can be adopted to fit different learner groups.
If teachers want to focus on practicing only one grammatical element at a time, they might focus on 3rd person- s and substitute "doesn't like" for "hates", so that the sentence pattern runs "everybody who likes… " vs. "everybody who hates …"
If teachers want their students to practice vocabulary, the rule might be that students have to add adjectives to the things that they like and don't like, e.g. red apples, soft dogs, sunny holidays etc.
If teachers want their (more advanced) students to form more complex sentences, the sentence's syntax can be extended to include a verbal -ing form, e.g. "Everybody who likes playing football/eating ice-cream/meeting friends" etc.
If teachers want their students to gain confidence or work on gesture awareness (e.g. shortly before a presentation), they might focus on the scenic aspects of the game and directly start with level 2) (cf. above) to make students express themselves without words.
General things to look out for:
Some students might be more involved than others; make sure no one slips the game and never comes to stand in the middle.
Some students are very expressive in their acting, others are not and the students in the circle might then complain that they can't see what is being acted out. However, for shy students standing in the middle and doing gestures might already be a challenge, therefore, instead of asking them to repeat their movements bigger or more expressively, ask them to turn around and repeat their movement to the other side of the circle.
