I usually play this game at the end of term with my EAL/D students and they love it!
It could be easily adapted to play in small groups in the classroom as part of Literacy Circle time or for fast finishers to play with the EAL/D students as they would provide a fantastic language model.
How to play game of the hat
You will need:
*Scrap paper ripped into small pieces
*A hat
*Paper or a whiteboard to score
*A stopwatch
Instructions for Round One:
1)Players form teams of two (pairs).
2)Each person playing gets 5 scrap pieces of paper and they write one common noun (no Proper nouns) on each piece of paper. For example you may write dog, pencil, shoe, hat, waterbottle.
3)The pieces of paper are folded in half and placed in the hat.
3)A team is chosen to go first. One person from the chosen team pulls a word from the hat.
4)A person from a different team uses the stopwatch to time 2mins.
5)The person with the paper silently reads the word to themselves and then they have 2mins to explain what the noun is without saying the name of the noun.
For example: (Waterbottle) Its a container, you put liquid in it, you drink from it, we have it on our desks.
6)The other person in the team has to guess the word. If they guess it correctly the person chooses another word and goes again, with the aim of successfully describing as many words as possible in 2 mins.
7) When the 2mins is up the correct words are counted and the team gets one point per correct word. The words do not go back into the hat, but must be kept for round two.
Note: If the person was in the middle of describing a word when the time is up then that word goes back into the hat!
8) A new team now has a turn, with one person describing and the other guessing.
9) This continues until there are no words in the hat, with one person from each team describing and the other guessing.
Round 2:
1) All of the words go back into the hat and are used for round 2.
2) Round 2 starts with the team that would have been next in the rotation from round one.
3) The person who guessed last time is now the person who pulls a word from the hat.
4) This time they only get one word to describe the noun (same nouns from round 1 so everyone has heard the words and needs to think about what words they heard. For example: (Waterbottle) you might say "drink".
The person guessing would have to think about all of the words in the hat and think what word in there would "drink" describe? This is a tricky round to play and students get better with more practise. Once again you play through as many words as possible in 2mins - with the number of correct words being the number of points you get.
5)Each team takes a turn with the person who guessed in round 1 being the person choosing the word in round 2.
6) Round 2 ends when there are no words left in the hat.
Round 3:
1) All of the words return to the hat.
2) The next team starts with the person who guessed last time being the person who chooses the word. This time they must 'mime' the noun - no talking at all (and no pointing at real life objects!)
For example: (Waterbottle) Student mimes picking up a bottle and drinking.
3) As in round 1 and round 2 students complete as many mimes in 2mins with the number of correct guesses being the number of points given.
Add up the points and the winning team is the team with the most points!
I hope you enjoy playing this game. My EAL/D students love it.