TEFL GAMES – The Name Game

Game Categories:
Opener
Energizer
Communication
Team-building
Review
Topical
Purpose: To get small groups thinking together and creatively solving tough problems.
Time Required: 20 minutes.
Size of Group: Unlimited, but participants should work in small groups of five to seven.
Materials Required: A flipchart with the alphabet displayed vertically, prepared in advance by the trainer.

The Exercise in Action: break the class into small groups, display a prepared flipchart page with the alphabet written vertically on it. ask a participant to share a random sample sentence from a newspaper or other piece of written material and spell out that sentence vertically next to the alphabet, creating random pairs of letters, stopping the process when the 26th letter of the sentence matches the letter “z.”  The groups are then asked to come up with names of famous people or fictional characters that match the random initials—for example, AN = Alfred Nobel; BO = Brian Orser—using each set of letters once and only
once. The team with the most names wins a small prize. (Note: This exercise is not as easy as it sounds.)

Tags: teaching, tefl, TEFL GAMES