Two days ago, ELTcation celebrated its 12-year anniversary (not that we noticed, but WordPress did kindly remind us of it), time flies! So I thought the best way to say ‘happy, happy, joy, joy!’ in this time of, ehm, language-learning infoware, with the beautiful idea that language learners lack only one thing on the way to success: information, and the more, the better (we are yet to see the miracles of language mastery acquired through AI-generated infographics densely populated with text and images), would be to post something light and resource-low. In all senses: low in resources, just one sentence. And a new game to add to the One-Sentence Games collection.
So, Bubbles!
It’s a variation on the sentence scrabble (Build a Sentence) I already shared in my collection.
The game can be played many times throughout the year, and the instruction cards can be recycled again and again.
Preparation
You’ll need one sentence (sources: your textbook, your imagination, Wordsplainer). One particular resource recommendation: I’ve recently come across a beautiful Tiny Stories collection (A1–A2) from the A Journey in TEFL blog. After your learners have done the reading, the Bubbles game could be used as a nice intensive reading activity.
Make a card with the sentence (you can do this fast with my updated Sentence Flowgraph – toggle ‘doodle bubbles’ and ‘jumbled’ to hide the arrows).
Now have them connect the bubbles to make a sentence (of course, you can just dictate the sentence and start playing the game immediately, but, as every teacher knows well, an extra layer of recycling never hurt anyone).
Once the learners have got the base sentence:
My flatmate always eats my food without asking.
we can start playing THE game.
The task is to follow the instructions. You can lead the game and pick random cards, or split the learners into small teams and prepare a pack of cards for each team.
These are the base cards:
Whether learners play individually or in a small team, it’s a good idea to structure the discussion as a Play-Pair-Share so learners can immediately share their sentences with each other.
You can take the game beyond the sentence and ask for reactions:
Why?
What happened next?
Add a problem
Add a solution
Add an unexpected event
Give an opinion
Share your experience
This way a simple sentence becomes a tiny story.
And that story can keep developing, just like this blog.
Happy birthday to ELTcation, and happy bubbling, everyone!
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