This Page in Japanese

Your Games!

Here is a great idea sent in by a Genki English viewer. Try it out and let us know what you think!

If you have a great idea please share it with everyone by submitting it to this page! Or check out the main Genki English Games Page

Or if you'd like to know when this page is updated, have a look at the RSS Updates page!


Guess the Value

author:  Nathan Jacobson
level:  Junior High
target_English:  question & answer / "the most,best,etc."
big_small:  Big groups

I have discovered two fantastic ways to come up with cool new games for your Eikaiwa lessons.  One of course is to check the games page on genkienglish.com.  The other which is almost equally effective is to sit on the sofa and watch Japanese television.  Japanese television is full of cool games that all your students will immediately recognize and that with just a bit of tweaking can totally be adapted to your English lessons.  That being said here is a game that I ripped off from Japanese television that will work brilliantly for your older students. 

The original television show is called Bari Bari Value.  It is a show where contestants form teams of one male and one female and then the teams all line up in a row.  The team in front is considered to be in first class, the second place team is in business class, third place is in economy class, and last place is in the cargo bay.  Naturally the object of the game is to end up being the team in first class. 

The way to do that is by competing to guess the value of certain items. 
The team that comes closest to the actual value gets to move forward one class. 
So if a team started in the cargo bay and won one time they would move up to economy class and the team that had been in economy would drop down a level into the cargo bay.  If the same team wins the next time they move from economy class to business class and so on. 

Although on the show all the questions revolve around the prices of certain objects I found that it is much more fun to get some trivia questions off the internet and go with that instead.  For example a few questions I used were:
How many hairs are in the human head? (Answer:10,000)
How far can a kangaroo jump? (Answer: 9.15 meters)
How fast can a dragonfly fly? (Answer: 96 kph) 

What really makes this easy to adapt for school is that most junior high school and high school classrooms are already arranged with the students sitting in 4~4 rows and paired off in boy-girl combinations.  When you do this game in class first read a question and write it on the board.  Then give the students some time to talk in their pairs and ask them to write their answer in big letters on a piece of paper.  Next have them hold up their papers while you write the answer on the board.  The team that guessed the most accurately from each row will switch with the team in front of them.  If the team in front should happen to win then they just stay seated in the front row.  This game works best in junior high and high school classes but by adjusting the level of the English you could probably use it for 5th and 6th graders as well.  Happy teaching!



Nathan Jacobson








If you have a great idea please share it with everyone by submitting it to this page!
Or check out the main Genki English Games Page




Sign up to get my top tips, games & hints via email!


Copyright (C) 1999/2023 by Richard Graham www.GenkiEnglish.com
Main Menu -|- Buy the Set -|- Contact Me