Inside-out games

Nabanita Deshmukh

Cricket, football and basketball are popular outdoor games, right? Well, think again!

Games, whether played indoors or outdoors, are a great way to learn and have some fun at the same time. In fact, the fun element along with the competitive edge a game offers is sure to turn children into motivated learners. The stress of remembering important moves or difficult formulae is greatly reduced because the focus of a game is on winning and cooperation rather than on rote.

Children learn best when they do not realize that they are being taught and what better way to do this than to give them games to play? Yet, choosing the right games and using them creatively is never easy. How does one select exciting games and make them an integral part of primary teaching? Here are a few tips:
• Determine the aim or objective of the game. Once the purpose is clear, the implementation of the game becomes easier.
• Choose a criterion. The choice of a game and its efficacy is dependent on a student’s age, cognitive level, interest and background, so games need to be chosen with care and discretion.
• Explain the rules. The procedure and rules of a chosen game need to be properly understood by students. A short demo can be done to avoid unnecessary confusion.
• Measure the impact. It is always helpful to note down the impact the game has had on students and the type of learning that has taken place.
• Adapt and be creative. Changing a game to suit students’ interests and backgrounds is always useful because it connects classroom-imbibed knowledge to the ‘real world’ and authentic communication takes place.

Still feeling hesitant? Check out these interesting ideas…

Classroom Cricket

Level: Class 5
Mode: Group activity
Duration: 40 minutes
Materials: None
Objective: Improvement of questioning and answering skills (spoken).

Procedure:
• The class is divided into two teams – bowlers and batsmen.
• Each team has a captain who finalizes the bowling and batting order.
• Based on the toss result which is supervised by the teacher (the referee), the bowling team begins the quiz. Each bowler asks six questions to the first batsman of the opposite team.
• The answering speed (5 seconds, 10 seconds) determines whether the batsman has hit a six or a four. If the batsman cannot answer the question in the stipulated time frame set by the teacher, say 15 seconds, the batsman is declared out and the next batsman comes in.
• Similarly, if a question is badly formulated or articulated poorly, a no-ball is given and the bowler has to reframe his question and the batting team ends up getting an extra point.
• The winner of the quiz is the team that scores the maximum number of runs (correct answers) without getting all out within the time frame set by the teacher.

Letter Football

Level: Classes 1-3
Mode: Whole class activity
Duration: 15 minutes
Materials: Football (small size)
Objective: Improvement of spelling.

Procedure:
• Students stand in a circle and the teacher stands at the centre with a football under her/his foot.
• A theme is announced. E.g., fruits.
• The teacher kicks the ball and passes it to a student who shouts out a letter such as: ‘f’ and kicks the balls towards another student who says, ‘I’.
• The third student who receives the ball cries out, ‘g’ and passes the ball to a classmate. The word ‘fig’ is thus created and the game continues with students creating other fruit-names by kicking the football around.
• If a student misses the ball with his foot or is unable to say a letter, he/she gets out. The winner is the student who remains in the game till the very end.
Variation: For higher classes, students could call out words to create sentences. Or, children could even say aloud sentences and the entire class could create a paragraph or story.

Dog and the riddle

Level: Primary
Mode: Group activity
Duration: 30 minutes
Materials: Riddle cards
Objective: Development of creativity and quick thinking skills.

Procedure:
• The teacher divides the class into two groups. Team members of both teams stand in a line facing each other with a gap of around three meters.
• Students of both teams are allotted numbers 1-10 depending on the class size.
• In the centre of the room or in equal distance from the two lines, a tray is placed with a stack of cards with riddles written on them.
• The teacher calls out a number, ‘3’, for example. The two students from opposite teams who have been allotted ‘3’ rush towards the tray to pick the card placed at the top of the stack.
• The student who picks up the card first, reads out the riddle written on it and comes up with the answer (E.g. ‘What has an eye but cannot see? It’s a needle’). If the first student cannot answer, the card goes to his opponent and points are given accordingly. The team with the maximum number of points wins the game.

Word chain game

Level: Classes 1-2
Mode: Whole class activity
Objective: Word recognition.
Materials: Word cards.

Procedure:
• The teacher gets students into an empty hall and appoints one of them as the ‘leader’.
• Each student, except for the leader, has a word card stuck on his/her dress at chest level with ‘parts of speech words’ written on it such as kind, dance, sing, tall, slowly, bus, on, and, it, plate, behind, etc…
• The teacher blows a whistle and shouts, ‘Action Words’.
• The ‘leader’ begins chasing his/her friends who run freely around the hall and tries catching only those students who have got action words written on their cards. Once he catches them, the children hold the leader’s hands and make a chain to catch the other ‘action word’ students.
Variation: The game can be played for identifying and recognizing words related to shapes, colours, animals and a host of other themes.

Paper basketball

Level: Classes 3-5
Mode: Group and pair activity
Duration: 30 minutes
Materials: Empty wastepaper baskets, paper sheets, pens
Objective: Improvement of questioning and answering skills (written).

Procedure:
• The class is divided into small groups of four students each.
• The first two groups called ‘basket holders’ and ‘writers’ respectively face one another by forming two parallel lines with a distance of around of two meters separating them. Students of both groups are allotted numbers 1-4.
• Each basket holder holds an empty wastepaper basket and stands facing a writer who has the same number as him or her and holds a paper sheet and a pen.
• The writers write a question on the paper sheet based on a topic decided by the teacher. After writing, they crumple the sheet, make it into a ball and hold it in their hands.
• The teacher blows a whistle and the writers aim their paper balls into the baskets held by their opponents.
• If the crumpled paper ball misses the basket, the student who threw it gets out.
• The basket holders open the paper sheets, read the questions and write the answers down quickly.
• The teacher collects the paper sheets and asks each basket holder and writer pair to read aloud their questions and answers together.
• The game continues with the basket holders writing the questions and writers having to answer them.
• The group that writes its questions and answers correctly gets more points and wins the game.

Dynamic games do not need ‘outdoor’ tags attached to their names or played in special grounds, in front of large cameras for select crowds. They can be innovatively used by teachers to make learning fun and uncomplicated for children whether inside or outside a classroom!

The author is a teacher, a teacher educator and a writer of children’s stories and poems. She can be reached at deshmukh.nitu@gmail.com.