Questions Game

All right, it’s an unoriginal name, but it was the best I could do. But I promise it’s a good game, much better than the name would indicate. It’s great for if you, ahem, forgot to plan a lesson or something, because it takes zero prep work and can be replayed every few weeks.

Divide the class into teams of 3-5 students. Each group needs one person to be the writer. Let each group pick a topic (or theme, Hung: téma); ones I offer as examples are things like Animals, Sports, Music, Food, Films, Szolnok, Hungary, Geography, History, Politics... you can come up with more complex things for higher levels (I’ve done this game with 5th through 8th grades). Each group picks one, or makes up their own, and then writes 5 questions about their topic (or 7 or 10 questions, depending on time and level). The important things about the questions:

-Question #1 should be easy (nagyon könnyü), and question #5 should be very difficult (nagyon nehéz). This is because question 1 is worth 1 point, 2 is for 2 points, etc.
-The questions need to be factual. To explain to lower levels, you can say the questions need to have one answer only. “What’s your favorite food?” or “How are you?” don’t work.

While the kids are working on questions, you need to write the groups’ chosen topics on the board. Under each topic, write the numbers 1-5. Also find some way of keeping score. Usually I just draw a scoreboard, but sometimes I’ll give out pieces of colored paper or playing cards as points.

When they’re finished writing their questions, check them, then start playing: Team 1 looks at the board and selects a topic and a point value, for example, “We want/would like Animals for 3 points.” You (or a game keeper) crosses this question off the board (so it can’t be asked for again), and whichever team wrote the question reads it. If Team 1 can answer correctly, they get the 3 points. If not, no points. Move on to Team 2; keep playing until all the questions have been used or the bell rings (hopefully the latter).

Variation one - if the class is small, you can also be a team yourself. It takes about 1 minute for a native speaker to come up with 5 or 7 questions; I usually use a topic like America or The English Language. One time with a 5th grade class I did the topic “Emily” and the questions were all things like “What is Emily’s favorite color?” “What state is Emily from?” Self-indulgent, yes, but they loved it.

Variation two - if you have a class which is easily distracted, the game can fall apart when Team 1 is asking Team 2 a question, because the other 2/3/4 teams are doing nothing. To counter that, you can let them steal the points (lehet rabolni, according to my 6a). So everyone has to listen to the question being read (only once, and only in English!) and if Team 2 can’t answer the question after a certain time, the first group with a hand up and the correct answer gets to take the points.