Country Game: Find Your Partner

Sonja Rittweger

OBJECTIVES:

PROCEDURE:

1. Start with giving each of your students one country card. Make sure they don’t show their cards to anyone.

2. As there are two cards of each kind, your students will then walk around in the classroom and try to find their “partner” through an interview game. You'll find ideas for interview questions down below.

3. Once a student has found his/her partner, the two of them give their cards back to the teacher. The ALT or JTE asks them the interview question again and they hand back their cards by answering the question with the first person plural form (e.g.: ALT/JTE: “Where do you want to go?” SS: “We want to go to France.”).

4. The students who have found their partner may choose their seats for the lesson as a pair. This is a good way to make sure that students get to work with different partners each time pair work or pair practice is required.

5. Option: The first five pairs get to write their names (in English) on the blackboard and you can hold a small “award ceremony”.

NOTES:

1. I let my students play this game in every English class I visit. My JTE also uses it when I’m not there. It helps the students get into “the English mood”.

2. If you don’t have a laminator, you can simply print out the cards on cardboard or poster board, cut out the cards and stick them into magic card protection foils (you can buy those at any 100\ shop).

3. Adjust the interview questions for the Find Your Partner activity to your students’ level of English and give them the opportunity to review the grammar points they have studied in class.

HANDOUTS and WORKSHEETS:

An example of this activity can be found here