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Archive for the 'Games' Category
10
Jun
The things you find…
14
Dec
Edubuntu
I was looking through the search terms that brought folks to my blog. One really caught my eye. The person had searched for “linux esl game”. I thought that was really interesting. He/She didn’t find what he/she was looking for here. But it did inspire me to write this entry. And maybe the next person searching for something similar will give Edubuntu a whirl.
I had seen Edubuntu a while back. It’s a spin-off of Ubuntu. It’s aimed at teachers and students, but it would also work well in a home environment. It comes pre-packaged with educational games, the entire Open Office suite and a variety of other things. Because it’s built off of Ubuntu, it’s part of a well established community. I’ve found the Ubuntu forums to be very friendly to those just getting started and a treasure trove of information. The distro also has the advantage of frequent updates. Ubuntu and it’s derivatives work on a 6 month release cycle. The current version is 7.10, code named “Gutsy Gibbon”. Don’t you just love the code names???
The other advantage many Linux distros, including the *buntu family, have is the ability to run it off a “Live CD“. You basically just pop the CD in and reboot your computer. As long as you can boot from a CD, it will load up. It will run slower than if you actually installed it to your hard drive, but it does give you a feeling for what running a Linux distro is like.
I cut my Linux teeth on Ubuntu. I highly recommend it to anyone who’s interested in learning more about Linux. It has excellent hardware support. I started on 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). Aside from it not supporting my weird wide screen monitor’s resolution and a WPA encrypted wireless out of the box, it ‘Just Worked’. Although I’ve upgraded my install to 7.10, I haven’t played around with it much, so I’m not even sure if those minor issues have been resolved. I’m quite happy with Fedora 7 and I only keep Ubuntu around for fun or when I want to see the differences between a Debian based distro (which Ubuntu is) and a Red Hat based distro (which Fedora is). In all honesty, it might be perfectly realistic not to ever touch the command line (aka “the shell”) using a member of the *buntu family. I won’t lie, the shell can be more than a little intimidating. But for some things, it’s much quicker than pointing and clicking through a zillion menus. And let’s face it, kids are flexible. Using the shell is very much like speaking another language. Kids are wired to learn. They absorb new stuff like little sponges. That’s not to say an adult can’t do it. I’m certainly making headway.
I’ll leave you with a few screen shots of Edubuntu. Click the pictures for a full size version.
The Desktop
Nautilus File Browser
GCompris Math
18
Nov
Pictures!
I had written a few weeks ago that I was having issues with the service I chose to host my photos. I never managed to find a way to get in touch with the folks and the forums were less than helpful. I can’t complain too much because I had a free account. So I found a new service. I don’t even remember what I was reading, but I came across webshots.com. The free account isn’t a bad deal. You get 1000 photos initially and then an additional 100 photos per month of storage space.
Uploading isn’t too bad on Windows. Supposedly there’s a desktop program you can download. Doesn’t do me much good with my main box being booted into Linux 99.9% of the time. The web uploader crashed Firefox in Linux reliably, but it worked fine on Windows XP.
To get my photos uploaded without going back to Windows on my main box, I learned how to mount my XP’s computer’s hard drive as a network share. I backed up all of my photos to my XP box (a good idea any way) and used the web uploader from there.
To make a long story short, all my photos are now posted. Yes, all 706 of them. They can be found here.
posted by Kathryn in Activites,Food and Drink,Fun things,Games,Home Life,Korea,Pictures,Staff,Students,Teaching,Web sites and have No Comments
16
Oct
Math Basketball
As per my typical Tuesday teaching schedule, I had a double with my B1 math class today. The first half of class we did the page in their text book. There’s no point in me going through the problems step by step (two digit subtraction with borrowing) because everyone can do it fairly easily. Recently, I’ve put a twist on it to make it a bit more fun, I told the kids that I’d give a sticker to the first boy and the first girl who completed the page 100% correctly. In addition, if everyone gets 100%, I’ll give the entire class a sticker. We’re getting closer to everyone getting 100% on the page. What’s stopping us? Silly mistakes like borrowing when you don’t need to or forgetting that you did borrow. No big deal. I still make mistakes and I’ve been doing this for… well… you don’t need to know how long I’ve been doing it. Once we were done with the page in the book, it was game time.
Today’s game was Math Basketball. We happen to have a toy basketball hoop and some (albeit moderately deflated) balls on the bookshelf in the foreign teachers’ office. I have no idea where the set came from. But hey. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. When there are materials for activities, use them!
Here’s how I structured the game. Divide the class into two teams. My favorite method of doing this is by rolling a die and then counting around the table. The first person goes on Team A. Roll again, counting from the next person. The person you land on goes on Team B. Repeat until everyone is assigned to a team.
I had three levels of math problems worth 1 (single digit addition/subtraction), 2 (two digit addition/subtraction without carrying/borrowing) or 3 (two digit addition/subtraction with carrying/borrowing) points. Students chose the point value they wanted. If they answered correctly (I supplied pencil and paper), they had the opportunity to shoot a free throw for an extra point.
I put a time limit on the game (as in we played until the end of class) but you could easily do X number of rounds. At the end of the game, add up the points. The team with the most points wins. In my case they get a sticker.
You can easily adapt this game to other subjects. How about spelling for a phonics class? Or identifying parts of speech for a grammar class? Be creative! Have fun with it!
And don’t let the lack of a basketball hoop and a ball stop you. A wadded up piece of paper and an empty trash can will work just as well.
04
Oct
Popcorn
Popcorn is a really simple reading game that one of the teachers at my last school taught us. The only thing you need is a fairly decent length reading passage. You want each student to get the opportunity to read at least a few sentences.
You, as the teacher, start the game. You read a random amount from you passage. It can be a few words or a few sentences. You can stop at the end of a sentence or in the middle. But when you’re done reading you say “Popcorn… (Name)!” (inserting a random student’s name).
That student then has to pick up reading where you left off. The student reads a random amount and when finished, the student says “Popcorn… (Name)!” and picks another student to read.
You can set the minimum amount a student has to read. I tend to set it based on the personality of the class members. If I have students who are especially anxious about reading out loud, I tend to set the minimum at one sentence. But if you have a class full of kids who love to read, set it higher. If you have students who will happily read the entire passage out lout for you, set a maximum amount they can read. A lot also depends on the level of the class and the length of the passage. If the students aren’t very advanced or you have a relatively short passage, you can set the minimum amount at just a few words.
Once the students get the hang of the game, they’ll try to trip up their classmates. One fun variation on the game is when students pause in the middle of a word rather than in the middle of a sentence.
The eventual goal is to have the students reading quickly and fluently as well as paying attention. You want the reading to bounce back and forth around the room, just like a kettle of popping popcorn. And that’s where the name of the game comes from.
22
Sep
Bingo!
Bingo is actually a pretty good educational game. I’ve played it with my traditional ESL subject classes and with my math classes.
For my low level math classes, I’ve played classic Bingo. This helps those students match the number words they are hearing with the numerals on their Bingo card. I’ve also played what I call “Math Bingo”. The playing card looks the same as a traditional one. Instead of calling out numbers, I use addition or subtraction problems. You could also use multiplication or division, depending on the level of your students. I’ve also played with colors and shapes. However, I haven’t been able to locate the site I used in the past to generate the Bingo cards.
For my other classes, I have a blank 5×5 Bingo grid. I give my students a list of words based on their current material. They have to take those words and write them in the grid. From there, the game is played just like regular Bingo. If you don’t have a lot of time, you can use various websites to pregenerate the cards for you and just hand them out. But the nice part about having the kids make their own Bingo cards is that they also get to practice writing (and there is no whining that things are unfair).
For my lowest level students, once we’ve finished learning the alphabet, we play ABC Bingo. The idea behind it is the same as playing classic Bingo with my low level math classes. Students match what they hear with what they see. One level up from this is using Bingo cards with just letters on it, but calling out words rather than letters. So if I call out the word “apple”, students will have to cross off the “A”.
I discovered through Google a custom Bingo card generator that can handle words and numbers. It’s pretty basic, but it’s fast and easy to use and it just gets the job done. You can find other sites out there. Many of the teaching sites that have a puzzle or game section will often have Bingo, but the question is whether it’s only offered to paid subscribers. Personally, I do fine with the site I linked. If there’s a list of words I want to use in the future, I’ll just save it as a CSV text document. Then I can copy and paste it into that site.
18
Sep
Top This!
I had a double period with B1 today. On the days I have doubles, I try to do real work the first half of class and then play a game the second half.
B1 has been doing subtraction with borrowing (which as an aside, the current Harcourt math series calls “regrouping”) the last few class periods. I was tired of my standard games (Math BINGO, The Slap Game, Around the World). So, I decided to ask our friends at Google.
The biggest pain in searching Google for math games is weeding out all the online ones. But some snazzy search modifiers got rid of most of those. I came across as game called “Top This!” (sorry I don’t have the link here at home). All you need is a deck of number cards. The directions on the site say to use 1-10 (or 11-20 for older students) but the only deck of number flashcards I had (and I had no time to make any) were from 1 to 100. No big deal. I was interested in two digit subtraction with borrowing anyway.
To play, divide the class into two teams. Have each team stand in a line on either side of your desk. Place the number cards in the middle. One student from each team plays at the same time. Have those two students close their eyes and draw two cards from the deck. Subtract the smaller from the larger and award all four cards to the student who has the lower score. You may be asking yourself, how does “Top This” come into the whole thing. The activity was initially written as an addition game. So each team tried to get the higher sum.
What made it especially interesting for my students was that some of the number flashcards had different numbers on the two sides. So they had to think about what numbers to use to give the smallest difference.
B1 seemed to have a lot of fun with the game. There was a run where Team A kept getting cards that had numbers that were ridiculously close together and Team B was getting just the opposite. But it’s just the luck of the draw.
ESL Photos- Glook – Summer Class June 12, 2011 katiesue
- What is he wearing? May 22, 2011 katiesue
- Cherry Blossoms April 21, 2011 katiesue
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