This is a group speaking practice activity ideal for 3 to 8 participants per group. This Collaborative Game is suitable for English language beginners who could benefit from basic level of speaking & listening comprehension practice.
For a group of 3 to 8 participants to play this game, 1 copy of Vehicle Cards Set A and 3 copies of Vehicle Cards Set Z are required. All of the cards in Set A are placed face down on the table (or playing surface) that the team members arrange around. All of the cards in Set Z are dealt out (as evenly as possible) between the 3 to 8 players in a group.
Then, without showing the cards’ faces to other team members, the players take turns sliding one Set A card at a time off of the table and verbally listing the vehicles shown on it, before placing the card back on the table, face-down.
The players in the group, must then use spoken English to cooperate in organizing a stack of Set Z cards on top of the Set A card that perfectly match all of the vehicles shown on the Set A card. For example, the 3 cards from Set Z shown just above, match the Set A card shown a little higher on the page.
However, they must do this without ever showing any of the cards they’ve been dealt to any other player.
Therefore, the only way to know which cards are being placed in each stack, is for the players to communicate that information to each other verbally. This necessitates on-going speaking and listening practice for the entire length of every round of play.
Each round of play continues until a stack of Set Z cards have been arranged on top of every Set A card on the table. Then the students check their own work for accuracy.
Full Prerequisites: Students can participate fully in this Collaborative Game with all of the activity’s available materials after memorizing/learning:
Materials Available:
This Collaborative Game is an excellent example of information-gap activities, which serve as communication practice exercises in both Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT). These game tasks provide language learners with repeated practice of important sentence patterns and topic-specific vocabulary.
Additionally, since successful completion of the Collaborate Game described below relies on accurately communicating information, the activity offers students an excellent opportunity to self-assess their communication accuracy and initiate error-correction themselves.
This is far more efficient and effective than students only knowing that they are making an error if an instructor points it out. It also empowers learners to seek out solutions to mistakes themselves, rather than primarily being passive receivers of teaching and error-correction.
1. Achieve the ability to successfully communicate which vehicles the learner sees and which vehicles the learner has.
“I see a _______________, a _______________, and a _______________.”
“I have a _______________.”
2. Achieve the ability to reliably understand which vehicles another game participant sees and has.
On-Going Self-Assessment:
After each round of play (a round ends when all of the cards in their deck have been grouped into stacks on the table/floor), the 3 to 8 members of a team can then flip over each stack of face-down cards and check to see if they have correctly grouped the right cards together.
Generally, if mistakes have been made, learners can usually self-diagnose the reason why the mistake was and then perform better on their next attempt at successfully completing the Collaborative Game’s communication task.
Graduation:
An instructor can assess individual learners by showing them several randomly selected Vehicle Set A Cards one-by-one to see if the learner can quickly and confidently use the activity’s Core Vocabulary Words and Sentence Patterns to accurately express which vehicles they see on each card.
1. Introduce the Core Vocabulary Words and encourage the students to learn them.
2. Demonstrate how to play the Collaborative Game, including use of the Core Vocabulary Words and Sentence Patterns for the necessary in-game collaborative communication.
3. Arrange the students into appropriate sized groups of 3 to 8 and get each group set up around a table or other playing surface.
4. Allow the students to play the Collaborative Game. If the students are young, it may be wise for an instructor to initially play the game with them for first round or two. This will provide an opportunity for the instructor to model the correct use of the activity’s Sentence Patterns.
5. If not playing with them, the instructor’s role during game-play, is to monitor the students’ practice to ensure correct use of the activity’s Core Vocabulary Words and Sentence Patterns.
6. When students fully achieve the activity’s Learning Goals, the instructor can then graduate the student(s) to a new learning opportunity/activity that further builds on the newly achieved learning.
Notes:
If Cheat Sheets are not utilized, students should be required to demonstrate sufficient memorization of the Core Vocabulary Words before they are approved to participate in this Collaborative Game activity.
It is possible to play a 2-person version of this game for one-on-one tutoring classes, but the game is most fun with at least 3 participants per group.
1: Vehicle Cards Set A
There 18 cards included in this set. Only 1 copy needs to be printed and prepared for each group 3 to 8 players.
2: Vehicle Cards Set Z
There are 36 cards included in this set. Only 3 copies need to be printed and prepared for each group 3 to 8 players.
This will, however, result in the following “extra” cards that are not needed to play the game:
3 extra bicycle cards, 3 extra boat cards, 3 extra car cards, 4 city bus cards, 2 extra helicopter cards, 2 extra plane cards, 4 extra school bus cards, 1 extra truck card.
These can either be included in the Set Z deck to add extra complexity — or set aside until needed for a different activity, such as the Vehicle Shopping Role-Play Activity.
Page 1/2 of Set A
Page 2/2 of Set A
Page 1/2 of Set Z
The Sentences & Sentence Patterns Used in this activity include everything needed to successfully participate in this Collaborative Game.
Standard Sentences & Sentence Patterns |
I see a _______________, a _______________, and a _______________. |
I have a _______________. |
Let’s check the stacks. |
We did it right! We won! Yes |
Oh, no! We made a mistake. Yes |
The Core Vocabulary Words listed below are all words that students should learn BEFORE attempting the Collaborative Game described on this page.
Core Vocabulary Words To Pre-Learn | |
Materials Set A + Set Z (18 Cards + 2 x 24 Cards) | bike/bicycle, boat, car, coach bus, helicopter, (air)plane, school bus, truck, van |
Notes:
*There is also the option to provide learners with a Cheat Sheet listing all of the Core Vocabulary Words next to their images. This will allow them practice using all of the vocabulary words without needing to first memorize them. The process of learning the words can be scaffolded by first allowing students to use the Cheat Sheet, and then (once they have some familiarity) encouraging them to flip the Cheat Sheet face-down and only use it after first attempting to recall a needed vocabulary word from memory.
The following words will be used to the play this game. However, these words don’t need to be pre-taught. These words can and should be learned WHILE playing the game. The instructor’s demonstration of how to play the game will provide an opportunity to show how all of these words are used as part of useful communication sentences.
Vocabulary Best Learned in Context | |
Used With All Material Sets | a, and, check, did, have, let’s, made, mistake, no, right (correct), see, stack(s), the, we, won |
Most of the words included on this list are hard (or virtually impossible) to depict visually on a flashcard. The optimal strategy for helping learners understand these words is to demonstrate their context/function.
This can be achieved best by using them while introducing this Collaborative Game and then having learners use them while participating in the activity.
