Detective

A game I absolutely love to play with all my students is Detective. It's amazing for helping the formation of questions and is always a good laugh. What I've recently done, in conjunction with a game from the intonation section of STRIP, is combine it with question tags to add a bit of drilling and some much needed engagement with the grammar topic.

What I found with twenty question tags was it could get a bit stale when throwing this game into the mix it really livens things up. 

Before starting the activity you should obviously give. The students some target language. Some questions to ask, some responses to give. If you're doing this activity with question tags then really give a good review of those that could be used. O r perhaps just give students the statements and let them form the correct question tag. Eg. You took the rubber..... And You don't have any f&$#*£g evidence.......

To start the game I tend to build a story to get the students involved. I usually use something inane like a rubber or a pencil sharpener and tell the class that it holds the key to the very existence of the planet. If that rubber were to fall into the wrong hands all hell could and, most likely, would break loose.

Once the students are fully immersed in the tale I tell them that the item was, in fact, stolen the night before and two of the students, working as good cop and bad cop, would have to find the culprit in the class. 

I then send the two students out of the class and get them to decide who is the good cop and who is the bad cop, I also give them three or four minutes to prepare their questions. I give the rubber to a particularly angelic looking students and then, the two detective then re enter the class and set about questioning half of the class each. After five or six minutes the students should have a fair idea of who has taken the rubber of power. If they can retrieve the rubber they win the game and can throw it into the mount doom. 

Right I'm off to do some parenting.

Until the next time.