English Learning Techniques - Interactive Board Games

• English
• Lower Secondary (Key Stage 3)
• Upper Secondary (Key Stage 4)
• Further Education (Key Stage 5)
• GCSE

Introduction

This set of slides covers examples and templates of educational board games, with a focus on English subjects. If you love the idea of using educational board games but hate the downsides of losing the dice, endless cutting and sticking and the loss of time as people argue over who is going to be the top hat then this is for you! There's a real variety here both in terms of complexity and design - all hopefully to inspire you and your learners!

Instructions

Additional information is in the notes section of each slide.

English Learning Techniques & Templates

Interactive Board Games

Welcome

The following slides contain a variety of templates you can use for playing educational board games in LessonUp. No need to ever worry about lost pieces or cutting up bits of paper ever again!

You can modify them as you need (and will work for subjects other than English too!)

These board games can work without devices (there is an interactive variant later in this slide deck).

There are notes on each slide providing extra details!

• Spinners with numbers make great dice you can never lose!
• Set a hotspot to moveable, set different colours and hey presto - counters!

  

Design Tips

• Run a board game as teacher-led, have it as a carousel work station or share to student devices. Versatile!
• Search for images direct from LessonUp to create your game board or search the Internet. Get creative!

  

Design Tips

START

FINISH

THE GREAT TERMS RACE

MOVE

TERMS

A really nice clean design to spice up the teaching of terms! 

The move spinner is customised, and spin the accompanying terms spinner for the terminology learning.

You could follow this up with a quiz to check learning!

START

FINISH

YOUR TEXT HERE

MOVE

TERMS

A clean template for you! Even the terms spinner is blank now - ready for anything!

MOVE

Poetry Ludo!

Plays like normal ludo except players have to analyse the poem!

Spin the spinner to move but make an analytical point about the poem and get one bonus turn!

Very easy to modify - replace the image of the text (you could do multiple pages with hotspots if needed) and replace the nice animated tiger with an image of your choice!

You can click on the poem to enlarge it and this could be played from the board or on student devices in groups. 

START

FINISH

HEX GAME RULES - 

Use the spinner to advance across the board, 1, 2 or 3 hexagons. You may move in any direction.

You cannot pass through a PEEL hexagon. If you land on a PEEL space your group must make a PEEL point on imagery based on the whole group feedback. If the answer covers POINT, EVIDENCE, EXPLANATION, LINK TO TEXT then you get to advance one hexagon. If the next space is a PEEL space then repeat the process.

If you land on a '!' square you get to move an opponent's dagger, If this is a PEEL space they must answer this on their next turn before being able to spin the movement wheel.

HAVE FUN

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This was an ambitious borad game made to run from the smart board, with different groups as teams. 

The animated PEEL spots were my way of reinforcing the message! 

The instructions are in the hotspot, especially useful if sharing to student devices. 

This is a much simpler template. During the creation process I found moveable hotspots are much easier as counters than custom images. 

You can change the colour or add relevant images. You could even have spinner spaces with a variety of questions in them!

I call this game 'Bums on Seats'!

This is a game for either two players or two teams. 

The idea in this example is that opposing teams or players take in turns to find and explain quotations about the themes of Hamlet. If correct drag an audience  token to the spaces. The winner is the team with the full side of the theatre!

Revenge

1

Ophelia

3

Mental health

5

War

2

Kingship

4

War

7

Acting

6

Betrayal

8

Religion

9

Sex

10

Death

11

Disease

12

Minor Characters

13

The Supernatural

14

This is a mind map variant of the 'Bums on Seats' game - same principle as before but this time either team picks a number - the colour coding can be used if you prefer for red or blue teams. Unlike a normal mind map, players take it in turns to contribute. Of course, you may develop your own 'house rules'!

Drag and reveal the hotspot in the centre of the board aka 'the stage'

The player has 20 seconds to think of a suitable quotation. Alternatively get your learners to speak about a topic related to the text and have the rest of the class call out any hesitations or repetitions, 'Just a minute' style!

The mind map bubble can be dragged to the place in the audience. 

You can use this template to create variations for any play. This one is for Hamlet of course!

Thank you for looking through these templates, 

We hope you find these useful and have fun teaching English through virtual board games!

Thank you for looking through these slides! Share and enjoy!