#gamesintheclassroom

Settlers of Catan is a turn-based strategy board game in which players start out with basic settlements and roads and choose their placements according to what they think will be most advantageous. In order to expand their empires they must obtain resources to build more roads, settlements, and cities. This is an ideal game for teaching pragmatics regarding negotiations and turn taking in the L2. This website breaks down, quickly and efficiently, how to play and what it looks like. This is a great resource for teachers and learners to understand how the game works.

Here is another TableTop video to either demonstrate to you how the game dixit works and give you a visual to work off of in your adaptation to the classroom or to show to your advanced learners to have them evaluate the pragmatic components (of which it is rich) or to simply understand how the game works so that it can be utilized in the language classroom afterwards.

Dixit is another fun storytelling game which can be played very quickly in language classroom. This game can utilize visual memory techniques to help with memory retention while at the same time creating a safe and comfortable atmosphere that raises the willingness to communicate (WTC) of the learners. Here it is part of the game to judge which picture might best represent a vocabulary word or topic under discussion. The debate can happen in a friendly atmosphere under the guise of playing a board game.

I have posted a lesson plan here that has three options of how to utilize the game “Once Upon a Time” by Atlas games into your classroom to teach pragmatics explicitly or peripherally at your leisure. What is most important is that this game can help to create a comfortable, fun place to explore language as well as pragmatic strategies.

Here is a quick blog write-up about how to adapt Once Upon A Time in various ways in the classroom. This is designed for use with expert speakers who are children but I found it applicable for the language classroom as well. There are a few quick tips on how to make the game less challenging which is great for beginning learners! Stay tuned and I'll post a skeletal lesson plan using OUaT so that it can be easily adapted for your own classroom!

Allow me to introduce you to Once Upon a Time. This is an analog card game that is incredibly simple to play. Everyone has cards that represent places, characters, or events. The group will work collaboratively to tell a unique story. When the 'active storyteller' uses a character, event, or place that is represented on one of the players cards that player can play their card and become the 'active storyteller. Each participant also has a special ending card and they weave their story in an attempt to get to their ending. The ideas are very basic and as you can see from the picture above the game is easily adapted to have any number of unique cards relevant to your topic of choice. Stay tuned for a demo on how the game is played as well as possible ways to incorporate it easily into your current classroom curriculum!