Memorising Orders

A simple concept really. Let's image you're practicng months. Standing at the whiteboard, you say January, then point to the student on your right and encourage them to say February. Then to the next student who says March, etc. You going round the class with each student saying a month until one pauses for too long, mispronounces or says the wrong month. When this happens you run back to the whiteboard and award a point (or a progession along the scoring system) to the opposing team.

You begin again, this time you may choose to start with a different student, you go through the months with each student saying the next month until someone makes a mistake.

So this is the game. And now you've played it you might want to try it with different vocabulary. For one of your lower level classes you could try it with days of the week for example. Or for morning, afternoon, evening, night.

How do you use this game with flashcards? Easy. Simply stick a set of flashcards on the board, drill them a couple of times, then play the game going round the class with each student saying the next flashcard in the order you've given them.

Finally remove the flashcards from the whiteboard and carry on playing the game. Students are remembering the FC vocabulary and challenging themslves to remember the order.

Red, Green, Yellow, Blue, White, Purple, Black. (close your eyes, can you remember the order?)

Mountain, Mount Everest, Mount Fuji, River, The Yellow River, The Mekong River, The Jin Mao Tower, Taipei 101 (recently I played the game with these FCs, going round the class with each student having to remember and say the next FC in the order).