Game 3 - Zsigó Márk

 

Plane seats

I came up with this game a few years ago and played it with a group of kids of mixed age. They really liked it, and made it fun to test their knowledge. This game was part of a bigger role-play style of lesson series, but I'm sure it can be used on its own too or in other contexts.

Preliminaries

Number of players: the main disadvantage of this game is that it can be only played with certain number of students. That is, it can be played with either 9, 12, 15, 16 or 20 students.

Age/ Proficiency Level: beginners, young learners

Preparation Time: setting up the room with big enough space in the middle for rows of chairs.

Play Time: 10-15 minutes

 

Preparation

In advance, paper money bills need to be printed and cut out, at least 20 or 25 or as many as to how many questions we want to ask students throughout the game.

Teacher needs to prepare with as many questions for the game as there are dollar bills. Again, at least 20-25 would do. The questions can be related to any learned material and can be any type of questions but I would suggest easy ones with a one-word answer. For example: "Tell me something from the room that is orange" etc.

One of the chairs in the classroom needs to be made look fancy. When I played it, I covered the chair with a nice red piece of cloth. Or if there is a teachers' chair in the room, which is better and more comfortable than the rest of the chairs, then that could work by default too.This chair is set aside until the end of the game.

Depending on the number of players, chairs are set up in a way that they face the same direction and make a matrix of either a 3x3, 3x4, 4x4, 3x5, 4x5 with enough space between rows for students to stand up and sit down.This arrangement of the room symbolizes seats on an airplane.

 

Object of the game

The way I played the game was that there was a role play, a story, a bigger picture in which this game played the role of advancing that story. In short, the relevant part of the story was that the kids traveled to the US from Hungary on a plane, and with the help of this game they could decide who would sit in first class (meaning that the person who wins the game can sit on the decorated chair for the rest of the day. These were young learners, so this was pretty exciting for them.)

The goal for the kids is to get the most amount of dollar bills by the end of the game by answering questions correctly. The richest person gets to sit in first class.

 

Rules of Play

Students sit on the chairs prepared in the middle. There should be no empty chairs. The teacher asks one of the rows of students to stand up. The teacher asks a question from the prepared questions. Only students that are standing can answer questions. Learners need to raise their hands before answering questions. The quickest ones are asked first, and if they give a correct answer, they are given a dollar bill and they can sit down. Then, the next questions come until there is only one person standing, then the collumn of that person stands up. The same goes for them, and then it is  rows again. The game goes until there are no more dollar bills or questions to ask.

The winner can take his or her seat on the first class seat and the room arrangement can be set back to the way it was orriginally.

 

Scoring

Each good answer is awarded with a dollar bill. The person with the most money wins the game.