Effective Classroom Games For ESL/EFL Teachers: Mystery Squares

A short description about the game of “Mystery Squares”

“Mystery squares” is one of the most effective games that you can use with your students either in middle or high school. It is very engaging. The central concept of the game is that points can be gained or lost if the students revealed a particular item. Bear in mind that not all the squares are equal. There are four categories. And each category contains a certain number of coins. Check the table below: 

The great thing about this game is that your students don’t know where the higher value coins are. The game has a random element, which means that high achievers won’t dominate the game. If you download the game, you may find that I already put some items of grammar lessons. But, you can refill the boards with whatever you want. You can put words, grammatical structures, questions…etc. It is a great way to encourage your students to produce sentences with words, and grammar items.

Note: you can always change the places of the coins. But, you will have to adjust the animation triggers on your PowerPoint software.

How to play the game of Mystery Squares

• Divide your class into groups
• Tell your students that the winning group is the one that gets as many coins as possible
• You draw a table on the board to keep the coins of each group recorded
• Tell your students that they will have the right to answer any question they want
• Click on diaporama
• Start with group 1, they pick up a question
• If they answer it, you click to reveal the coin and then record it in the table on the board
• If students don’t answer correctly, you move to group 2

Please, Like our Facebook page and share this post if you think it can help someone you know. I would really appreciate your comments with respect to the use of this game.    

Here is your link below. Click on it to download the game in a PPT format.

Download 

Share

Tweet

Follow us

Save