I want to be .. Game + New Photo Cards

Nigel has sent in a great game based on the Pink Fish game that perfectly links “What do you do?“with “What do you want to be?

1. Put several jobs picture cards, face down, at one side of the room.
2. Put another set of cards on the other side of the room, again face down.
3. Put the kids in teams.
4. The front person from each team races to the first pile of cards.
5. They choose a card and say “I’m a ….” plus whatever is on the card.
6. Then they rush over to the other pile of cards pick another and say “I’m a ….” + the first card, then “I want to be a…” plus whatever is on the second card.
7. Two points for saying both phrases, an extra point for being the fastest team to do it and an extra bonus point if both of the jobs match!

It’s a great way of getting kids used to joining sentences together and is also very useful for introducing other tenses in a simpler way.

There are picture cards for the “What do you do?” theme and I’ve also just added more cards to the Photo Real Jobs cards for a grand total of 47. You can find those on the right hand side of the “What do you want to be?” page.

There are also the latest demo versions of the “What do you want to be?” picture cards. What do you think?

Richard Graham

Hello, I'm Richard Graham. When I was a kid I found school to be sooooo boring... So I transformed my way of teaching. I listened to what the kids were really wanting to say and taught it in ways they really wanted to learn. The results were magical. Now I help teachers just like you teach amazing lessons and double your incomes!

11 Responses to “I want to be .. Game + New Photo Cards”

  1. julian

    Excellent. I was hoping these’d be up soon.

    The pictures look good to me. Nice and colourful. They should do the job just fine. Only comments would be: the baseball player loks like he’s only half dressed, and like he ought to be driving a motor car in about 1890.

    I really like the left-handed rockstar though! It’s cool to be left-handed!

  2. Margit

    Yeah, I just had a look at the Photo Real job cards, and thought the same thing about the left handed butcher. Though, I don’t like meat, so I couldn’t look at it for too long.

    I think the game sounds great, and I want to try it with different skills to practise (f.ex. pronouns or present tense via past tense(today, yesterday)

    Thanks for sharing, Nigel.

    Richard, where do you get these Photo cards? I tried several Google image searches, but I find it really hard, to get what I want.
    All the kids I’m teaching love the “famous people cards”, and you can do lots of practicing with those, but meanwhile they are getting a bit old
    (well, for the first time I felt a bit sad for George Bush, because last weeks 5th graders didn’t know who he was but of course they all knew Obama !!!)
    Anyway, I would like to fill those cards up, with new people, is there an easy way to do this?

  3. richard

    The photo real cards are licensed photographs so they won’t show up on google. But if you look on sites like istockphoto.com etc. they have lots of pictures.

    All the Genki English graphics are all original commissions of course!

    The famous people cards I don’t have any plans to do, unless I get a bit of time spare in the next few weeks!

  4. Flossy

    The cards are wicked!!! I would go along with Julian though after looking at the baseball player in the pdf file could he have a different colour for his shirt and the lower part of his trousers (not sure what the correct name is for them!)or are they socks??

    Genki man looks great with his mask, oversized super hero chin and all the muscles. I hope the children pick up on the cape as they did mention that capes are dangerous. This is part of the Disney ‘The Incredibles’ film where they show all the accidents the other heros have had with their capes!! I cannot wait to see the other cards for the superhero song too.

    As always Richard, Thanks!!

  5. Julian-k

    Great timing, especially with the game – I’m teaching this in the next week or two!!

  6. julian

    Yes – great timing – I’m teaching this in about 20 minutes!

    These demo cards will get a test run – let’s see if the 6th graders giggle uncontrollably at the half-naked baseball player!

    btw I also wasn’t sure about the elderly florist at first, but came round to the idea in the end.

  7. julian

    Well, two classes down, one to go. So far, so good.

    The cards got the reactions I expected. Lots of interest and amusement…then complete breakdown with the baseball player! Expressions of disgust and disbelief. The baseball players in the classes said the outfit was totally wrong. BUT, it did keep them interested…

    GenkiMan was a hit.

    The song went OK. These are 6th graders, so never the most vociferous of students. Gestures are not popular, and I end up looking a bit of a fool. Again.

    Tried it as a Big Voice competition in two teams, which was a success.

    Nigel’s game is great. It is a bit of a squeeze with lumbering 6th graders, but they got quite into it – even making Superhero gestures when they picked that card. Thanks for that idea, Nigel.

    Now it is breaktime, and I could hear a few choruses of ‘I wanna be a rockstar!’ as I walked down the corridors. That is always a good sign.

  8. richard

    Thanks for the report, that’s a pretty amazing result for a 6th grade class! I’ll get on to making the improvements in the pictures!

  9. nigel

    glad to here people liked the game.

    As for the photos, the only odd thing that i noticed, was the dancer. (I just edited the reason out here, Nigel I worry about you sometimes! πŸ˜‰ – Richard)

  10. Sakura

    I had fun with my 5th graders this morning. They love the song and picture cards except the elderly florist!

    For games, we had charade and pictionary and julian is right, I can hear them singing I wanna be rockstar!!

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