"Sentence Castles" Game

This is a new game that I just came up with recently, combining several aspects of other simple ESL games.

The game is called "Sentence Castles." The class divides into groups and have a "castle." They get to name their castle and they start with 100 points. What I do is write a sentence on the board that is in the incorrect order. Students must figure out the correct sentence order. When they do, they raise their hand and say it. If they get it right, they can bombard another team with a "cannon ball" (I simply used crumpled paper "oragami boulders"), but they have to stand in the middle of the room and spin 15 times before bombarding. If they hit a member of another group, they steal 10 points from them. If the cannon ball doesn't hit anyone, no one gains or loses points. HOWEVER, if the other group catches the cannon ball with their hands, the group that catches has 10 seconds to make up a sentence and then spin 15 times and bombard another group. Also, no one gains or loses points if the counter-attacker fails to hit anyone.

Of course, this is all done after doing a 15-minute overview of basic sentence structures and articles (the students always get confused about when and where to use articles).

This works well for both small and large classes; smaller classes can actually get quite competitive since the competition is quite narrow.

It can get all wild, especially when most of the students get dizzy very easy. The best part is that students always have a lot of fun and they get very eager to participate.