Harry Potter Doctors (Halloween!)

I just got reminded of a really good variation of the Harry Potter game!

You simply play the game as usual, but this time instead of using “What are you doing?” you link it in with the Doctor, Doctor Body Parts lesson.

1. So this time the Voldemorts catch the Harry Potters and say “Your …. hurts” e.g. “Your arm hurts”

2. Then the Harry Potter holds this body part!

3. When the free Harry Potter comes along they ask “Are you OK?”

4. Then the reply is “No, my …. hurts!”

I tried this out a couple of years ago and it works really well, especially with older kids.   Have a try and see.

Or you could try the Halloween Harry Potter version to go with CD6’s Happy Halloween Song.

Or if you’re struggling with teenagers or junior High kids you might want to look at the Teaching Teenagers: The Harry Potter Effect – it might help you understand a touch of where they are coming from!

Richard Graham

I'm on a mission to make education Genki—fun, exciting, and full of life! Genki English has now been researched by Harvard University and licensed by the British Council around the world. The results have been magical! Now I'm here to help you teach amazing lessons, with all the materials prepared for you, and to double your teaching income so you can sustainably help many more students in the future!

7 Responses to “Harry Potter Doctors (Halloween!)”

  1. Yumiko

    Richard, this is great!
    I have never thought of linking Harry Potter game with Doctor, Doctor! song. I will do this game!
    Thank you!!

  2. Carol

    I agree wholeheartedly with Yumiko. A brillant idea!

  3. Flossy

    How could this game be adapted to a classroom situation?? I am worried it might just end up like the pointing game!

  4. Sara

    Am I right in remembering that the Harry Potter Game is pretty much freeze tag? If so, Flossy, you can use it with any theme, as long as you’ve got some space to run around in. Whoever is “it” tags the other kids, who then have to freeze. Unfrozen students can help the frozen ones by asking them a question (like “What’s your favorite color?”, ” Are you okay?”, “How old are you?”). The frozen kid has to answer, and get touched by the unfreezer (otherwise you’ll end up with a lot of yelling across vast spaces) to run around again. You can also frozen kids holding up numbers on their fingers, or acting out vocabulary for the unfreezers to say (like “You’re cold!” or “You’re a rockstar.”), depending on what you’re studying. As you can tell, my kids LOVE freeze tag.

  5. Yumiko

    Flossy, when I did the original Harry Potter Game with 30 students, the Voldemorts were so smart that they cast only one spell all the time, which means they were so fast that the free Harry Potters didn’t have time to save the ones under the spell. How happy the Voldemorts were to finish the game within 30 seconds!

    So I added one rule that the Voldemorts have to use different words each time. Then it didn’t end up like the pointing game. And kids really enjoyed it!

    Hope it helps.

  6. Flossy

    Thanks Yumiko and Sara. I am never in a hall or gym and always in a classroom. My question was really asking how you could play such a game if you cannot run around?

  7. Margit

    Hey, I think i haven’t run that GENKI since a long time.
    We were only 6 including myself, so i made myself the Voldemort. It was really fun, the kids had to use really big voices and yes, I thought I could make it with my Birkenstocks, but actually I ended on my knees and everybody came running by asking me “Are you okay?”

    Thanks for this idea; I tried to play the original version a while ago, but it didn’t work well. (don’t ask me why). This one is great!

    Flossy,
    could you split up the class and have about half of the kids watching?
    You could try it with very few voldemorts and maybe give them a certain skill of how they have to move (only skipping on one leg,etc)this way it will be not that fast and less dangerous.

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