GRAMMAR REVISION made FUN – no prep activity

By the far the best and most versatile grammar revision game I have ever used is probably not new to many of you, but while many ‘tried and tested’ games I have borrowed from others have not always had the desired results, this one has had a 98% success rate* in my classes of all ages from children to adults.  NO PREPARATION is required, which for my extensive range of teaching (toddlers to adults – I know it’s crazy but I love the variety it brings in teaching methods despite the heavy preparation workload) is very welcome, but it is a MOST EFFECTIVE, HIGHLY FOCUSED form of FUN GRAMMAR REVISION.

It’s the

                                GRAMMAR AUCTION

1. Divide the class into groups of 2 – 3 students.

2. Write a column on the board listing the GROUPS and next to it a column assigning each of them a BUDGET of 1000 Euro.

3.Two more columns are for POINTS and C.P. (Correction Points)

4. Explain that the objective is spending money to buy correct sentences and thus win a point.  The group with the most points wins at the end of the lesson or time allocated to it.

5. Minimum bid is 50 euro, then 100, 150, 200, 250 to a max bid of 300 euro.  They are not allowed to jump to a higher sum without having bid the previous sum (no 300 euro directly!!).  THEY MUST SAY THE SUM OF THE BID THEMSELVES (you would be surprised and how much difficulty some students have in saying these numbers!).

6. Write a sentence on the board, have them bid and then write the remaining budget next to the group that bought the sentence.

7. Now ask, “Did they spend their money well or badly?”

8. Those who reply “badly” should motivate the mistake they see and try to correct it.  If they do they get a correction point.  If the sentence is correct the group that bought the sentence eventually gets their point.

9. I like to make the “simmer” before letting them know if the sentence is right or wrong so they end up making lots of hypotheses even when the sentence is right.

10. If the group that bought it suddenly realises there is a mistake I give them first option to correct it.

11.*The only time it gets out of hand is when the students bid just for the sake of it without even reading the sentence and not caring if it’s right or wrong.  I’ve very rarely had the situation, in which case the game stops as the objective has been defeated.

12. All in all it’s a very fun game with lots of useful revision without them even noticing it!        

Hope you have fun with it!
Susan

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