"WordWish" is a vocabulary building game designed specifically for young and very young learners (kindergarten and early elementary grades) with a very low level of basic English. There are six seperate boards each featuring 9 vocabulary items representing a 'lexical set' - including classroom items, animals, food, clothing, weather and colors+shapes. Accompanying the playing boards are 54 cards.
The games featured here are relatively simple, but clear enough for young learners to grasp quickly and challenging and exciting enough for students to maintain motivation and focus their concentration. The lexical sets represent typical items students usually learn in their first couple of months of instruction.
Preparing the Materials
Each download consists of a playing board, a board cover/backing, and nine card cut-outs to be applied to the board. You will need to have Adobe Reader installed on your computer to access these PDF files. The images and writing on the playing board have been watermarked (faded), whereas the cards are bright and vivid. Glue pages 1 and 2 of the download together to create the playing board (or, if the amount of color printing that you can do is limited, print out page 2 only and ignore the cover/backing). Then cut out around the white lining of each card on page 3 of the download - these are the playing cards. If you have the time and resources to do so, it is recommended that you laminate both each separate playing card and the playing board itself. This will give the materials a longer life and also make them more impressive to look at!
Distribute the 6 playing boards (1 to each student or one per two or three students - depending on your class size) and give the students some time to talk about what they can see on their and other classmates' playing boards. Then proceed to play Bingo by shuffling the playing cards and pulling out one random card at a time. If a student has that picture on their playing board they should indicate so by naming it. The teacher then hands that card to the student and they place the card on the correct space of their playing board. Once they have placed cards over all 9 spaces on their playing board, they are the winner of that round. Rotate the playing boards around the class to new students, re-shuffle the cards and play the next round.
Game 2: Lotto
Similar to the Bingo game except in this case the cards are spread out face down on the table or in a stack. Students take turns selecting cards. If they chose a card that corresponds to their playing board, then they keep that card and earn one point. If it is not their card, they return it to the table face down or at the bottom of the card stack. Once one student has located and placed all of the cards required for their board, that student is the winner and the round is over, each of the other students earning as many points as cards they have managed to find. For calmer, well behaved classes, this activity can quickly be organized in group work with less active participation from the teacher.
Later this game can be more challenging by incorporating the vocabulary with simple meaningful sentences. For example, students who flip over a correct card may be required to state "this is a..." or
"I have a..." or "I found..." before they have the right to collect it and add it to their playing board.
This is a simple memory game version of both of the above mentioned applications. In this game, students examine their boards for a minute or two to try to remember which words are featured there. They then turn their boards face down with the blank cover face up. As the teacher draws random cards from the deck and announces what they are as in Game 1 above) or as cards are flipped over or taken from a deck on the table (as in Game 2 above), students can offer to 'claim' them. They place 'claimed' cards next to their overturned board and the game continues until all of the cards have been drawn randomly and claimed by students. They then turn their boards over and see how many they got right. For each card they claimed that matches their board, they get one point. For each incorrect card, they get -2 points. To make this game harder, have students also attempt to place their cards in the same order/lay-out as that featured on the overturned board. Correct words that have been incorrectly placed could then incur a -1 point penalty.
