Teachers can make any sort of grammar review more interesting for the whole class by introducing competition and the rules of gambling. Not only do students revise syntax, grammar tenses, and spelling with this grammar gamble activity, but they get practice pronouncing numbers in English, doing mental math, and working in teams.
Grammar Gamble ESL Review Lesson Materials
Very few materials are needed for this extremely adaptable lesson, but the teacher should be prepared with the following:
- a whiteboard/blackboard with markers or chalk at the front of the room
- several sentences with grammatical errors and several that are correct. These sentences can be taken from student writing samples or generated by the teacher.
- a piece of paper/mini-whiteboard per group and pens/markers
Grammar Gamble ESL Review Lesson Procedure
Before playing, the teacher should model the activity and not merely explain the concept of betting money, but show what it means through an example.
- Teacher divides students into groups of three and asks each to come up with a team name. Each group should have a piece of paper or a mini-whiteboard to record their bets and answers.
- Teacher draws columns for each team name at the top of the black/whiteboard and writes a specified monetary amount under each. For example, this can be 100 GBP or 500 USD depending on the teacher's home country and the student's number knowledge. This is how much money each team begins with and their available amount to wager.
- Teacher writes one sentence on the board and each team has thirty seconds to write down if the sentence is grammatically correct or not and the amount of money they'd like to bet, depending on the confidence of their decision.
- Once each team has written down their answers and wage amount, the teacher asks each group to share their decisions out loud, while also checking what's written down on their papers so teams aren't influenced by each other, then marking answers on the board.
- Teacher announces if the sentence is correct or incorrect, and if it's the latter, asks why it is incorrect, eliciting the correct version. Then, the teacher adds money to the teams who indicated the correct answer and subtracts money from teams with the wrong answer.
- After several rounds, the team with the most money wins the grammar gamble.
In this lesson, students learn how to compromise and will most likely enjoy a grammar review that involves betting money, even if it is fake.
Katherine Kocisky - Katherine graduated with a degree in English Education and French in 2004 from Illinois State University. Since then, she has taught high ...
