Wild Card Game

A classroom has already discussed about present and past simple tense. Now, it is the time for the students to have an exercise of the two tenses. When I have to ask them to practice producing simple sentences in a traditional way (writing sentences on their notebook), soon they feel lazy and bad-mood, they grumble along the activities. They think that it is really monotonous and can not encourage them to learn optimally. Knowing this fact, it is necessary to prepare a fun activity for them to practice producing simple sentences as well as drill them the use of the two tenses, present and past simple. 

To encourage students motivation in learning English, teacher prepares a fun game called 'Wild Card Game'. The goal of this activity is to practice making sentences using word cards correctly. Here, teacher prepares a set of cards consisted of 'wild card' (no words on it) and 'word card' (with words on it). The 'wild card' can be used for any words needed by the players and the 'word card' will be about nouns, verbs, to be, article, prepositions, or adverbs. The number of cards are around 100 or 150 cards.

The procedures:

1. If you have really small classroom consisted of four or five students, you can play it at once. But if you have more that that, you can play it in group and divide the students into group of five or six students. 

2. The students/players sit in a circle and determine who will be player A, B, C or D and the order can be clockwise based on the first, second, and so forth.

3. Teacher shuffles the cards and spreads the cards to each player. Each of them will get six cards only in front of them . The remaining cards are put in a pile in the middle of the players. 

4. Next, each player have to arrange a meaningful sentence using the six cards or less than those. If the cards do not work well, the player can exchange the card with another card in a pile one by one based on their turn. The players can go on to exchange the card until they can make a meaningful sentence using cards in front of them. The thing you have to notice is that in front of each player, there must be six cards only, even though they exchange them many times. (The cards thrown are put in another pile and can be used by another player)

5. If a player finds 'a wild card', he/she can use the card to help completing his/her meaningful sentence. The "wild card' can be any words needed by the players.

6. Once a player can make a sentence, he/she read the sentence aloud, and if other players say that it is correct, he/she can collect and set aside the cards.

7. Player who can firstly collect thirty cards wins the game.