One of my students’ favourite games is ‘Monkey King.’ It’s a game I learnt from listening to one of Silvia Tolisano’s podcasts last year. It’s a simple game where all of the students, except one, sit in a circle of chairs. The one student left is sent outside where she or he cannot hear anything that is happening in the classroom. Then one of the students is selected to be the Monkey King and the student outside is then called back in, not knowing who the Monkey King is. In order to find out who it is, they need to go around the circle asking a question. In Chinese I usually use ‘What is your name?’ Whoever has been asked this question then answers ‘My name is…’ The person who has been appointed as the Monkey King says ‘My name is the Monkey King!’ when it is his or her turn. This is the sign for all the students to swap chairs as quickly as possible and for the student in the middle to hopefully grab a chair to sit on. The kids love it and it’s a fantastic way to get usually very reluctant speakers to not worry about speaking a bit of Chinese. It’s usually my most reluctant students who are keenest to give it a go and ask to be it. I was rapt when that started happening!
Today I had the great pleasure of a visitor in my classroom. One of my colleagues is originally from Poland and his niece, from Poland, was visiting for the day. She came to see what Chinese class was like, but instead ended up teaching us some Polish, so we played Monkey King in Polish today which was fabulous! One of the best things about it was that it was a challenge for me to learn the Polish phrases and so the kids got to see me have to ask for the words again and again, and also I got to play the game from their point of view. This made me realise and remember how hard it can be for kids to produce phrases in a new language. How scary it can be to be saying something new like that in front of a class, but also how much easier a game like Monkey King can make it. I’ll have to come up with a few more games like it.
For more LOTE games check out the LOTE Games page and read Touchy Feely Language - Literally!
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Tags: games, monkey king
This is a fantastic game! I’d love to use it in my language teaching,eg Maori (or Chinese if I have a Chinese class next year). Thank you so much for sharing with us.