Magic Card

 Magic Card

This is based on a popular children’s game that is over a hundred years old.

Flashcards are stuck to the board as shown below:

Whiteboard

FC

FC             FC             FC              FC             FC

The FC in the centre of the whiteboard is the ‘magic FC’ or the ‘magic card’.

Now the students get up out of their chairs and arrange themselves in a standing circle; if it is a young class you can encourage them to hold hands. (For small classrooms, chairs may have to be moved to give more space.)

One student is picked to be the ‘ghost’. This student walks around the circle tapping each of their classmates on the shoulder, naming the flashcards that are on the whiteboard. When they decide to say the ‘magic FC’, then these two students (the ghost and the student who was tapped) must race around the outside of the circle (the two students can either run in opposite directions or in the same direction – try both ways and see which works best for your class), competing to be the first to arrive back at the place where the ‘tapped’ student was originally standing. If the ghost gets there first, the ‘tapped’ student must now be the ghost.

So let us say for example that the FCs are for clothes. It has been decided that the ‘magic FC’ is to be ‘scarf’.

The #3s from team A is chosen to be the ghost. He walks around the circle tapping each student on the shoulder; he taps the first student on the shoulder and says, “Jeans”, taps the next student on the shoulder and says, “T-shirt”, moves on to the next student and says, “Dress”. He moves around the circle in this way, tapping the students and saying the FC vocabulary until suddenly he decides that it is time to say the ‘magic FC’. He arrives at the #4s from team B and taps him on the shoulder, saying, “Scarf!” Suddenly these two students are racing around the circle, trying to be the first to arrive back at the gap where the #4s from team B was originally standing. If the #3s from team A is the first to arrive back, the #4s from team B is now the ghost but if the #4s from team B is first, the #3s from team A must be the ghost again.

Usually this game is played with no points being awarded. It is simply played for fun. Although one disadvantage of this is that students often want to be the ghost and can be disappointed to not get a turn. An idea to overcome this problem is to not allow a student to be the ghost twice. If a student finds themselves being a ghost for the second time, then the teacher can choose another student to be the ghost.

Another option is to play for points: every time a student from team A is the ghost, team B is awarded [ten] points and vice versa.