Communication Games

MELISSA PLUG & JASON EBERLIN

Purpose of Communication Games

verbal listening
How to Teach Communication Games

Identify a Language need

Model the game
Organize the pairs or groups
Guide the practice
Talk about the experience
Assess students abilities to communicate orally
Phys. Ed. Curriculum Expectations

swimming
Grade 9 Health and Physical Education: Living Skills
Overall Expectations
1. demonstrate personal and interpersonal skills and the use of critical and
creative thinking processes as they acquire knowledge and skills
Specific Expectations
1.3 communicate effectively, using verbal or non-verbal means, as appropriate,
and interpret information accurately
1.4 apply relationship and social skills

running
ELL Curriculum Expectations

ESL Level 3: Listening and Speaking

Overall Expectations
1. demonstrate the ability to understand, interpret, and evaluate spoken
English for a variety of purposes
2. use speaking skills and strategies to communicate in English for a variety of
classroom and social purposes
Specific Expectations
1.2 demonstrate understanding of spoken English on familiar and content-area
topics in a variety of interactive situations
2.2 use a number of conversational expressions to negotiate spoken interactions
ELL Student

Grade 9
STEP level 3 working towards STEP level 4
Listening: Respond to Simplified oral text and can follow multi-step instructions
Speaking: Use conversational strategies to maintain fluency as well as asks
follow-up questions to seek additional information
Reading: Read and follow instructions consisting of a few steps for a variety of
tasks
Writing: Generates ideas with peers, sorts and organizes ideas and chooses
subject-specific words to write about a topic
Moving towards STEP Level 4

Listening: Respond to an oral text with linguistic complexity approaching

grade level
Speaking: Use vocabulary to clarify meaning by incorporating low-
frequency words in complex sentences
Reading: Read and follow instructions for multi-step tasks in a variety of
academic situations
Writing: Generates ideas about a topic using a variety of strategies,
organizes ideas and information & can choose expressive, subject specific
vocabulary to write in a variety of forms
Lesson

Learning goals
I can effectively communicate and interpret instructions using verbal cues
I can work with others to evaluate rules and ideas from others
I can listen to and understand familiar routines
Introductory Lesson
In class phys. ed. lesson
Game 1- Maze

Collect triangles, Go through the maze by partners directions only

Complete without seeing the partners maze

Partner 1 Partner 2
Game 2 - Ranking

Combine 3 pairs to form a group of 6

Use the rules provided rank them from most important to least
Be prepared to explain why you chose that order
Game 3 I went to gym class

2 Teams
First person begins with I went to gym class and brought item A, second
person says previous item and then adds item B and so on
Words must be anything you might need to play badminton
I went to gym class I went to gym class and
I went to gym class and
and brought my shoes brought my shoes, shorts and
brought my shoes
and my shorts goggles

Person 1 Person 2 Person 3

Sources

Herrell, A.L., Jordan, M. (2016). 50 Strategies for Teaching English Language

Teachers: Pearson Education Inc.
Dixon, G. (2017). Warming Up: 8 Great Warmers for Any ESL Level. Retrieved
from http://busyteacher.org/19262-8-great-warmers-for-any-esl-level.html
Calgary Catholic School District. (2016). Badminton Rules 2016. Retrieved from
https://www.cssd.ab.ca/Programs/Athletics/JuniorHighAthletics/badminton/Do
cuments/BadmintonRules.pdf
STEP: Steps to English Proficiency, A Guide for Users. (2015).
Ontario Ministry of Education. (2001). English as a Second Language and
English Literacy Development: The Ontario Curriculum.
Ontario Ministry of Education. (2016). Health and Physical Education: The
Ontario Curriculum Grades 9 to 12.