GAMIFICATION
Here is my proposal for a gamification activity. In this case, we will be working on irregular verbs: these have traditionally been memorised at home, with barely no help from the teacher, and students just having to learn a list of verbs by heart. With this gamified activity, students are supposed to practise irregular verbs while they are entertained and motivated to win an award. Below you will see what this story is about!
An evil wizard has dismantled the English language: he has spread a dangerous magic powder which doesn’t let people speak correctly: all verbs have now become irregular!!! As a consequence of this horrific curse, everybody has started saying things such as “haved”, “taked”, and even “canned”... we need to stop this linguistic crime! Fortunately, some clever English students have achieved to survive the evil of this terrible being: not it’s YOUR turn to give the verbs their correct form back, and to stop the wizard so that language can be safe again from any cruel villains.
In order to solve this challenging riddle, you will have to divide yourselves in 5 groups of 5 people. There are 10 texts hidden in the class, and all the verbs in the Past Simple are conjugated with -ed. You have to find the texts and correct the verbs which you think are irregular, turning them into their correct form. For each correct verb in the text once you finish, your group will get 1 point. At the end of the activity, the members of group with the highest score will get 0.5/10 more in the exam. Please mind the following rules:
-Each group is allowed to take only TWO texts (make sure that you write the name of your team on it!)
-It is only allowed to speak in English (if you break this rule, your group will lose half a point)
-This activity is a COOPERATIVE exercise, so yelling, insulting or being aggressive to your classmates is absolutely forbidden (if you break this rule, your group will lose 1 point)
What are the different levels in the Gamification?
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- Finding the texts to correct
- Correcting the verbs which need correcting
- For each correct verb at the end of the activity, the group will get 1 point
- The group with more points will get 0.5/10 in the exam
- For each broken rule, 0.5 or 1 point (depending on the rule) will be taken for the group
How do players progress through the narrative?
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By cooperatively finding the texts and correcting the verbs.
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What marks the end of the game?
At the end of the class, when everybody has finished their corrections, we revise them all together and points are attributed
Furthermore, students will receive character cards so that their job is even more motivating. Here is an example of the cards they will be making: the picture and the text will be blank, and they will be able to filll it in as they wish
