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Jeu du baccalauréat


This is a very good game for any lesson, but especially good for the end of term when your energy is flagging and you want the class to be doing most of the work!  You give pupils a set of categories (e.g. towns in France, food, drink, objects in the classroom, objects around the home, hobbies, sports).  They draw a column for each category and then you give them a letter.  They have to find a vocab item for each letter in a given time limit (e.g. 3 minutes).  They can work individually or in pairs/small groups.  If a group finishes before the time has expired you can stop everyone.  Pupils could use dictionaries if you want dictionary use to be an aim.

Pupils get two points for an item which no-one else has got and one point for an unoriginal one.

An alternative would allow students to put in as many words as they can think of for each category. In this case you would not award extra points for original answers.

The game practises vocab and keeps pupils pretty quiet (if that’s what you want).  The tricky bit is the correcting of answers after each round, which can get a bit noisy, but it does teach pupils to listen to others. If the correcting together is too noisy or time-consuming, then you can take the sheets home to look through quickly and choose winners.

Americans call this game Categories and it can work at all levels. You just have to adjust the categories.

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