Patty cake to

Pac-Man
Gaming your way to second
language acquisition
 Hello!
Michaela (Hylen) Parisi
French Teacher (2-5 IB & DC)
Raymore-Peculiar High School
www.mmeparisisclassroom.weebly.com
michaela.parisi@raypec.org
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 1.
Why use games to teach

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 “
Every maker of video games knows
something that the makers of curriculum
don't seem to understand. You'll never see
a video game being advertised as being
easy. Kids who do not like school will tell
you it's not because it's too hard. It's
because it's--boring.
― Seymour Papert

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 Quick question...

◍ Quizlet Live
◍ Kahoot
◍ Quizizz
◍ Flyswatter
◍ Bingo

Before I begin, how many of you use games in your classes? Raise your hand if you
use any of the following games….
Are there any others that you play? What are they and how do you use them in class?
While these games are great, they are not going to be the games I am talking about
today. Today I am going to focus on more interactive and authentic games.
 Why use games?

◍ Improve engagement

◍ Increase language skills

◍ Connect with the culture

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 Improving Engagement

Which would you pay more attention to…

1. A lecture about the layout of Dakar

2. A game where you have to navigate Dakar

Why?

Imagine you are in a French class and your teacher gave you two options, one was to
listen to her as she goes through a PPT showing pictures of Dakar and the other was
to play on online game where you navigate Dakar to find all the hidden clues and win
a prize.
Why would you chose the one you chose?
 Increase Language Skills

Two facts:
1. You cannot acquire a language unless
you practice it.
2. When practicing a language there must
be an intent to communicate, a
negotiation of language.

Our goal as language teachers is to teach students the language, or at least that was
my assumption going into my given career. I did not become a language teacher so I
could show pretty pictures of Paris and eat cheese. I want my students to be able to
use the French language. As such there are two things I need to keep in mind.
One, You cannot acquire a language unless you practice it
Two, When practicing a language there must be an intent to communicate, a
negotiation of language
If my students simply sit in class and read French books all day long or watch French
movies they may become pretty good at interpreting French, but they would have a
hard time producing it. But in the same way, If my students were to read scripted
conversations on cards all day and never attempt to form their own thoughts and
ideas, they would have a hard time recalling any language other than those scripted
conversations.
And that is where games come in. Games require student participation and
communication that is spontaneous and useful for accomplishing an objective. When
playing games students have to communicate with one another and get across their
ideas (negotiation of language) in order to work together and win the game. They
have to figure out how to get the ideas in their head across to the other members of
their team in the target language, and that is what students would have to do in a
real-life scenario.
 Connecting with Culture

Why use authentic

games?

And here is where I talk about why I will not be talking about vocabulary games like
Quizlet Live. While Quizlet Live and those sort of games are great for teachers to take
a brainbreak and for students to check out while still “Studying” vocabulary, they are
not achieving the linguistic goals I mentioned earlier. Don’t get me wrong, I love those
games and use them with my students, but that’s not what I use when I want to help
my students with interpersonal communication. That’s straight up learning vocab.
Authentic games, on the other hand, can be useful for immersing students in the
target culture as well as target language. For students to understand the point of a
game and the tasks of an authentic game they have to first know the background of
the game. Take for example Monopoly.
 10

Before beginning the game students have to know that what a railroad is, utility
companies, and you could even go into the importance of the names of the
properties. There are even other monopoly games that have different property names
that are important for the theme of the game like Indian Monopoly, Harry Potter
Monopoly, and even Fortnite Monopoly. All this to say that you can use those different
themes of games to discuss culturally relevant topics before even starting to play. It
sets up background and gets kids engaged in the culture.
 2.
Example Authentic Games

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Here are some authentic games That you could use in your classes. Sorry to any
other languages, but the majority are French games and Spanish.
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Chroni Cards (which they have in many languages, not just in French) are great for
teaching historic events as well as language. For this game students read the cards
then put them in order where they think they fall on the timeline. The closer they get to
the correct time, the more points they get. This is great for upper level students
because the information on each card is detailed and you could use this as a jumping
off point for lessons on history or various other topics.
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This is a game about storytelling through images, but also about tricking others.
Students each have 6 image cards in their hands, one student is the “storyteller” (this
role changes each round), and the storyteller selects one card from their hand and
gives a sentence for it. This sentence could be anywhere from one word to a
complete sentence. For example, for that card above a student could say “Music is in
the air” or they could say “a talented musician” or “floating away” or even just “Blue”.
Then the other players select a card from their hand that could fit the same theme as
the sentence the storyteller gave. Everyone (including the storyteller) puts their cards
facedown in the center and the storyteller flips them over. Everyone (except the
storyteller) guesses which of the cards was the storyteller’s original card, and if they
guess it correctly they get a point.
This requires students to be able to describe and make inferences about pictures, as
well as understand the meaning of what others are saying. You can easily play this
with lower level students.
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This one comes in many languages and different sets. They have sets from ancient
history to inventors, to animals. Not only do students have to read and understand
what is on the card, but they have to know their history! It is basically like Chroni
Cards but less information is given on each card so it is easier for lower level students
to play.
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This one you can find in French or in Spanish, and it works wonderfully. Firstly, for
vocabulary this is usefully, but also when pairing synonyms and trying to find subjects
that links words together. The more that students can put words into categories,
subcategories, and find synonyms, the better. This helps create synapsis in the brain
that more solidify the vocab. You may be thinking that this can’t be used for culture,
but it so can. The words that on are the cards speak volumes to what a culture values
including famous people and places.
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Again, great for upper level students, Nonsense is published in different languages.
For this game students pick one card from the yellow pile and one from the black. The
black cards give a story that students have to tell, and the yellow card give an
“invader” word. Students have a minute and a half to tell a story based on the card
they drew and hide the somewhat bizarre invader word in the story. Students have to
guess what the invader word was at the end of the story. Great for getting students
speaking in presentational mode and listening closely for details.
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Ta Bouche is a game I have only seen in French but may exist in some form in other
languages. My French 4 and 5 students love this game because it is all about
insulting or giving comebacks to other students. It is a lot like Apples to Apples, where
one student pulls a card and reads a sentence from it, then other students have to
look at their card and choose one of the insults/comebacks on the card. This requires
students to not only understand the words on the cards, but also the context in which
that can be used. It is great for teaching informal/familiar slang and comebacks.
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This is basically like Clue but with clues and reading involved. Self explanatory.
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This is my student’s favorite game. If you have every played mafia, it is basically that,
but with werewolves. Students are given little cards that say their role on them and
students have to accuse each other and use deductive reasoning to figure out who
the werewolves are. Here is an example round that I did with my French 5 class
(please excuse their craziness, it was the Friday before homecoming and they were
wild).
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So here is an example of a round of Loups Garous with my French 5’s. This was an
assembly day schedule the day before homecoming, so they were pretty squirrely. I
also had to write a kid up for something he said during this round, so my apologies in
advance.
 Developing Games

Let’s be real, we can’t use authentic games

all the time.

Sometimes we need to develop engaging games

that incorporate the same things as
authentic games.

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So, authentic games are great and I would highly recommend using them, but as
teachers we can’t use authentic games all the time. It costs money to buy them and
sometime we have specific content themes to teach. In those situations we can
develop games to use in the same way as the authentic games I featured previously.
 Some games you can develop

◍ Word association games

◍ Guess Who games
◍ Escape Rooms
◍ Your own versions of authentic games

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Here are some examples of games that I have used in my classes and that can easily
be developed for your specific classes. Word association games like games such as
Code Names, escape rooms, Guess who games (not just the one we all played as
kids), or your own spin on authentic games.
Some examples of games

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 Trio

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One of my favorite word association games I use in my classes is Trio. For Trio a card
has three words/phrases on it, and students have to find a word/phrase that connects
all of them. I have three levels of cards, green = easy, yellow = medium difficulty, and
red = hard.

I feel like this game and others like it are pretty self-explanatory in terms of why they
are useful. But what I would suggest is using these games to introduce vocab. You
hide new words in with familiar ones and then hear students say “Heeeeey! What’s
this mean?” when they find words they don’t know. It gets them interested and makes
them connect the new word to other words.
 Who is it?

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My students absolutely love this game. It’s a different take on a Guess Who game.
You split the class into teams of 4-7 people, and everyone has a whiteboard and
marker. You show a slide that has a statement or question on it and everyone has to
write down the name of the person on their team or in the class who would be most
likely to do that thing. The team that has the most number of people who wrote the
same name gets the point. Here are some example slides.
You are watching a boring film, who falls asleep
first?
You are in gym class, who lifts the most weight?

This game is awesome because it build classroom community and is very low risk. If
students don’t understand the sentence on the screen it is ok because they just have
to write a name.
 Guess Who

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Another Guess Who style game, you give each student a sheet of paper with 12
people on it. For each of the 12 people there are 6 details about them.You choose 6
people from the class to be characters given on slips of paper. Those people sit at the
front of the room and everyone in the “audience” takes turns asking questions
20-questions style. They must ask yes or no questions and they can only ask one
question per turn. You cannot ask the same person multiple questions in a row. For
example, If I ask Stacy if she works in Europe, the next person to ask a question
cannot ask Stacy a question, they must ask someone else. The first person to guess
who someone is gets a point, the game is played until everyone has been guessed.
 The 6 of Us

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If anyone has ever played “Imagine Iff” this is basically that game. Put students in
groups of 6 and give each student a number 1-6. Each student then receives cards
labeled with the numbers 1-6. Each group gets a set of cards and a di. Students take
turns reading the cards and everyone votes for the person they think fits that card
using the numbered cards. Like in the “Who is it?” Game, students get a point if they
guess the most popular answer. For example, if 4 of the 6 put their answer as #3,
those 4 would get a point and the other two would not.
 Heads-Up

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A great game to use for circumlocution and vocab practice. Have cards in a box or
bag, one student draws a card, does not look at it, holds it on their head and other
students have to describe the image on the card, they keep going until the student
with the card correctly guesses what it is.
 Question it!

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Put students into pairs and then each pair is paired with another group of partners.
For each pair, they get a set of question word cards and each group of 4 gets a set of
scenario cards. To start one student of the four draws a scenario card and reads it out
loud, their partner then has a minute and a half to ask as many questions to their
partner as possible. Their partner has to respond to each question in at least one
complete sentence that makes sense given the scenario. The other pair of students
referee. The other students can “whistle blow” if a question was not properly asked or
if the partner did not respond in a complete sentence or properly address the
question. Once the minute and a half is up, the other pair goes. The pair that asks and
answers the most questions get a point for that round.
Petit Prince
escape room

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Escape Rooms were a fad a few years ago (and still are around), and they can be
super fun to use in class. Students have to communicate and work together to find
clues to escape. It works well to build classroom community, get students thinking
critically, and force them to use the target language. The one downside to these is
that they are one and done. So you spend hours coming up with a great game, and
then you can’t use it again with the same group… But it’s really fun to hype up the
escape room for a week before you play it, making sure students get excited, and by
the time they get to your door on the day of they are mentally ready to go.

Here is an example of one I did with my French 4 class. After having read the book Le
Petit Prince, I had students do a Petit Prince escape room! You can do this with any
subject really, and it’s a super fun way to get kids thinking critically, working together,
and up and moving around. If you have questions about how to go about designing
your own escape you feel free to talk to me after my presentation.
 3.
How to use games in class

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 When to incorporate

◍ Once a week on a designated game day

◍ When your students are crazy (like the day
before Homecoming, assembly days, day before spring break)
◍ Brain breaks
◍ When introducing new vocab or building
classroom community

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Let’s be honest, we can’t play games every day in class. We have to hit themes and
topics and do other stuff. But what I would suggest is incorporating one game a week
into your classes.
Questions?