Creative games for bored students

Hello,



Today, I would like to share some of the creative challenges that you can find in Tanner Christensen's book "The Creativity Challenge" but not only. I don't think Christensen's book is aimed directly at teaching a foreign language, but still, his ideas lend themselves easily to teaching and can be used as end of the lesson/beginning of the lesson activities, but also developed into fully-fledged blocks.

Here we go.

IDEA Number 1.

Making a RUBE GOLDBERG machine, which means, for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, a deliberately over-complicated device used to perform a very simple function. So for example, something that resembles Kermit the Frog's machine for activating the "on" switch on the radio.

IDEA Number 2.

Give students the first lines of famous, but not necessarily, novels without providing them with the titles, and ask them to come up with the first paragraph of the novel. There are quite a few exercises possible based on the idea of using the first lines from books. I personally got inspired after listening to a BBC radio 4 programme by Tim Key entitled:

Tim Key's Suspended Sentence

And so, to come back to the main topic: what about giving students the beginning and the ending and ask what happens in the middle? Or put everything upside down and start from the ending?

IDEA Number 3.

Since students are often tired and bored, why not taking advantage of that and do a role playing exercise where they are to act out as somebody who is purposefully boring?

IDEA Number 4.

Christensen's book encourages the reversal technique quite a lot, and so he puts forward the idea of
flipping things upside down, using a camera to take an upside-down picture or simply looking at the world through such a reversed perspective. In the same style, he writes about reversing a daily routine.

IDEA Number 5.

Listing alternative uses for ordinary objects.

IDEA Number 6.

Using the Six Thinking Hats technique to solve a problem. It is a very good speaking exercise, forcing students to concentrate on a particular point of view. The technique was invented by Edward de Bono and is used by companies. Each hat has a different colour, and each colour represents a different perspective:

the white hat  = is concerned with facts and figures
the red one = is related to emotions
the black one = focuses on the negative aspects and why something cannot be done
the yellow = is all about optimism and hope
the green = is interested in creative solutions and quirky ideas
and the blue = is all about control and organisation, and so represents probably the most methodical approach

IDEA Number 7

Looking at an ordinary situation through a magnifying glass and describing a recent experience in as many details as possible, good for practicing specific words, which students rarely use, for example specific patterns, noises, movement verbs etc.

IDEA Number 8

As far as distorted descriptions go, try also the following, imagine that an everyday object, or a part of your body got all of a sudden a hundred, a thousand times bigger or smaller, how would it affect your life and your behaviour?

IDEA Number 9

Describe something complex to a child.

IDEA Number 10

There are many more ideas in Christensen's book.
But there are also many other inspirations our there:

I would also encourage you to have a look at the Odyssey of the Mind website.
Here it is:

 http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/curriculum.php

Odyssey of the Mind is an international educational program (as we can read on their website) that is aimed at the younger and older students and which encourages them to find creative solutions to various problems. It really does make young people face serious challenges that vary in scope from physics and chemistry to literature and film.