Play to Learn

One of the things I like the most about working with young students is that they love to play games during class, although this wasn't the case when I was working with teens. Now that I've read and thought about why this could have happened, I've come to realize that perhaps the games that I was proposing were not adequate or interesting enough for them.

After watching Graham Stanley's talk about digital games, where he analyses the use of different online games that are not specifically written for education, and he describes different uses that these games could have for educational purposes. Some of the key concepts that he states are reflected on this word cloud

I entered his blog and searched for different games that I could use with my adult students. We are reviewing different tenses, so I chose the game called vortex. The game's  goal is to solve different paranormal activity mysteries. In the blog you can find the walkthrough and different pre and post game activities. Personally I think that this game is great to practice reported speech and Speaking skills. It could be played in pairs or if you only have one computer in the classroom.

I'll be playing this game with my students and I'll let you know how it goes!
Cheers!
Euge