Janken Games

Glyn Lancefield

Elementary school children like playing janken and you can use it in English games. Two fun janken games are janken bingo and janken get.

JANKEN BINGO

PROCEDURE:

1. Teach the grammar point and vocabulary. For example, "What sport do you like?" "I like (baseball)".

2. Give each student the same bingo card. You could give them blank cards and get them to fill in the squares themselves if time is available. To teach the above grammar the bingo card would contain pictures of different sports.

3. Students find a partner and play janken.

4. The winner asks "What sport do you like?" The loser answers "I like……" and chooses one of the sports. The winner marks off one square of that sport on his bingo card.

5. Students find a new partner.

Final Comments:

Obviously you can change the bingo card to fruits, animals, colors, and subjects, etc. to teach different vocabulary.

JANKEN GET

Preparation

Cards (same size as playing cards). If the class is big a lot of cards are needed to give students 5 each at the start of the game. So it can take a long time to prepare. You can laminate the cards or buy small plastic card cases at JUSCO to protect the cards so they can be used again.

PROCEDURE

1. First teach the grammar point. This is a good activity to teach "have", but you can adapt it to teach different grammar and vocabulary. Teach students "Do you have a (pencil)?" "Yes I do" "No I don't". Using pencil case stationary is good for this.

2. Put around 10 big pictures of different stationary on the board to remind students of the vocabulary.

3. Give each student 5 cards featuring some of the stationary.

4. Students find a partner and play janken.

5. The winner asks "Do you have a ……?" and chooses an item of stationary. If the loser has that card, he replies "Yes I do" and hands it to the winner. The winner says "Thank you". If the loser doesn't have that card he replies "No I don't".

6. Students find a new partner.

Final Comments

The winner is the student who has collected the most cards.

Keep a few cards ready to give to students who lose all their cards.

This activity can also be used to teach "Do you like ……?" with sports, animals, fruit, subjects etc.

NOTES:

ALT and HRT should demonstrate these activities using English to explain how to play.

ALT and HRT should join in these activities with the students.

Offer prizes to increase student motivation.

Don't do these activities for too long as they may get boring. Setting a time limit of around 5 minutes is a good idea. Two shorter rounds may be better at keeping students' interest than one long round.

You could increase students' use of English by teaching them to say rock, paper scissors when playing janken.

Both these activities get the students up and moving around the classroom. They are fast and competitive with students trying to collect as many cards or bingo lines as they can. Most importantly, students have many opportunities to use English in a fun activity.