Analog games – an off screen experience!

Nabanita Deshmukh

Play leads to brain plasticity, adaptability and creativity. Nothing fires up the brain cells like play. – Stuart Brown MD

Numerous articles have been written on the detrimental impact of excess screen time on students’ health, emotions, and well-being, yet very little has been discussed on teachers’ addiction to digital devices. Teachers need off-screen time as much as students do for developing skills not necessarily connected to their teaching profession and these can often be done through games.

Oh, yes! Analog or non-digital games are not mere entertainment but go a long way in fostering bonds between teachers and instilling values of sportsmanship, cooperation, camaraderie, and discipline. Furthermore, they promote hands-on activities, sensory learning and ‘real’ interactions between players that are absent while playing digital games.

Taking these benefits into consideration, a list of non-digital games that make use of minimum or no equipment is provided to help teachers explore new domains of creativity and amusement. These simple games, if played enthusiastically with the help of game-leaders (dynamic colleagues who can organize and conduct the games) could make teachers more focused, communicative, and lively.

Musical games
Listening to music is a popular pastime for most people and teachers are no exception. Music helps them relax and remain cheerful despite problems they face while teaching. Musical games that combine rhythm, melody, refrain (repetition), guess work, and quick thinking enhances concentration and memory.

Game name: What’s in that tune?
Materials: Music system or mobile phone and Bluetooth speaker
Objective: To develop concentration, retention power, quick thinking, and listening skills
Procedure:
• Choose a collection of instrumental tunes of popular songs.
• Divide the players into groups and play an instrumental musical piece on the speaker.
• The team that guesses the name of the song, the singer, musical instruments used, or the film (if it is a movie song) gets points and the game continues until the list of musical tunes is exhausted and a winner is proclaimed.
Variation: Instead of playing in groups, the game can also be played individually.

Drawing games
Drawing is often a neglected activity and teachers hesitate to use it in class especially with older students. Interestingly though, drawing is not only engrossing but when used in games, it brings out the creative characteristics of players and increases motivation and interest.

Game name: Draw the word
Materials: Word cards
Objective: To improve vocabulary with the help of drawings
Procedure:
• Prepare small word cards with words of objects written on them and put them in a bag.
• Ask a player to pick up a card, read it silently and then draw it on the board.
• The player who guesses the word first, gets a point.
• The game continues until all the cards are exhausted and the player with the maximum number of points is the winner.

Game name: Drawing dictation
Materials: Chart paper, sketch pens, black/white board, chalk/white board markers
Objective: To develop precise instructional skills
Procedure:
• Draw an object on a large chart paper such as a house, for example. Roll the chart paper and stand facing the players (audience) with your back to the board.
• Call a player (volunteer) to the board. Unroll the chart paper and show the drawing only to the audience. The volunteer does not get to see the drawing.
• The players in the audience verbally instruct the volunteer, one after another to accurately reproduce the chart paper drawing on the board. Each player can only use one sentence at a time to instruct.
• The volunteer becomes the winner only if he/she manages to reproduce the drawing accurately after listening to a pre-decided number of instructions by the game-leader.

Sensory games
Sensory perceptions play a vital role not only in learning a language but also in improving concentration, motivation, and comprehension. Sensory games that combine predictive skills through the sense of smell and tactile stimulation become an absorbing pastime.

Game name: Feel it!
Materials: Small objects and a bag
Objective: To enhance predictive skills through the sense of touch
Procedure:
• Put small objects inside a non-transparent bag like buttons, erasers, matchbox, safety pin, pens, etc.
• Make the players sit in a circle pass the bag around. Each player has to feel the objects and name any one of them aloud.
• The bag gets emptied on a table when everyone finishes their turn.
• The players who identified the objects correctly get points.
• To lengthen the game, each player can say a few words about her/his object by drawing on personal experiences.

Game name: Smell it!
Materials: Fragrance-emitting flowers
Objective: To enhance predictive skills and memory through the sense of smell
Procedure:
• Pluck a large number of fragrance-emitting flowers from the immediate environment and arrange them on a tray.
• The players are given five minutes to smell the flowers and know their names.
• A blindfold is then placed around a player’s eyes.
• The game leader picks up a flower and makes the blindfolded player smell it.
• If the blindfolded player says the correct name of the flower he/she gets a point.
• The game continues until every player gets a chance to smell and guess the names of the flowers.
Variation: Instead of having individual players, the game can be played in groups.

Interactive listening games
The art of listening is not confined to students alone but to teachers as well. In fact, one of the ways of modelling good learning habits is by listening attentively to what the students have to say. In this regard, a listening game combined with good diction is going to be an interesting pastime for teachers.

Game name: The tail end
Materials: None
Objective: To develop good listening skills, memory, articulation, and quick thinking
Procedure:
• A player begins by saying a word aloud.
• The person sitting next to him says another word starting with the ending letter of the word his neighbour has said.
• The game thus continues with every player saying a word beginning with the last letter of the word the person sitting beside them has said.
• Players who repeat a word already said by someone else and those who cannot come up with a word during a limited time frame are considered ‘out’.
• The player who survives all the rounds is declared the winner.

Writing games
Writing is never easy to practise, especially in this digital age where a lot of our time goes in browsing the internet or sending short, telegraphic messages on social media. In this regard, an interesting game on story writing is worth trying out!

Game name: Story folds
Materials: Pens and paper sheets
Objective: To develop story writing skills and motivation
Procedure:
• Take a sheet of paper, preferably a ruled page.
• Make players sit in a circle and on desks. Each person needs to have a pen.
• The first player (Player1) starts a story by writing one sentence at the top of the paper sheet and then passes it to the player sitting next to her/him (Player 2).
• Player 2 continues writing the story by adding one more sentence below the first one. She/he then folds the topmost part of the paper sheet so as to hide the sentence written by Player 1.
• The paper sheet then goes to Player 3 who adds one more sentence and then hides Player 2’s sentence with a fold.
• The paper sheet is thus passed around until all the players get a chance to write.
• The game-leader then opens the folds and reads out the story.
Variation: Instead of writing stories, players could begin drawing and each player adds something to the drawing by folding the top parts of the paper as the game progresses.

Quick thinking games
Quick thinking is an important ability that helps teachers take decisions and solve problems quickly in the classroom and beyond. Games that contain elements to develop this ability along with opportunities to improve verbal skills become all the more interesting.

Game name: Word talk
Materials: Paper slips with words written on them, small bag
Objective: To help teachers talk freely by using guided-speaking techniques
Procedure:
• Write words on small paper slips; fold them up and put them into a bag.
• Ask a player (Player 1) to pick up three paper slips from the bag.
• Player 1 reads the words silently and then starts to talk for approximately 30 seconds by using all the words written on his slips.
• The game continues with all the other players/speakers getting a chance to pick up word slips and talk.
• The player who talks confidently and convincingly is voted as the winner.

Communicative games
Communication is the building block of good social skills. A teacher who can express herself/himself well and engage in meaningful conversations is not only an asset in the classroom but in her social circle as well. The art of asking questions and responding to them is an important aspect of communication and games that contain interrogative elements are worth playing.

Game name: Five questions
Materials: None
Objective: To develop questioning skills and the ability to answer questions
Procedure:
• Ask a player (Player 1) to think of an object.
• The other players have to ask her/him questions that pertain to size, colour, usage, shape, location, etc. Player 1 answers the questions articulately.
• Five questions can be asked by different players to guess the correct answer.
• The player who gets the right answer or word thought of by Player 1 is the winner.
• The game continues with the other players who take on the role of thinkers one after another.

Mixed ability games
Games that develop mixed abilities are original and interesting as they cater to a diverse group of players. The modes used in such games are based on movement (kinaesthetic), art (drawing, craft), acting (dramatics), and writing. Creativity and thinking ‘out-of-the-box’ play an important role in these types of games.

Game name: Pickled charade
Resources: Slips of paper
Objective: To promote imagination, comprehension, out-of-the-box thinking, and drawing skills.
Procedure:
• Write words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) on slips of paper, fold them and place them in a box.
• Each player picks up a slip from the box and acts/writes/draws to help the other players guess the ‘word’. For example, in the word ‘sundial’ the word ‘dial’ can be partially drawn or shown through craft, while ‘sun’ can be mimed or the first letter ‘s’ could be written on the board as a clue.
• The player who guesses the right answer gets a point.

Game name: Colour rings
Materials: Large tub of water, rubber bands of different colours, pencils
Objective: To develop comprehension and eye-hand coordination
Procedure:
• Make a compilation of riddles or write cryptic clues on colours.
• Take a tub of water and throw in a set number of different coloured rubber bands.
• Make a player stand in front of the tub with a pencil in hand and read out a riddle or a cryptic clue on a particular colour. A good example of a riddle would be:
Orange, violet, yellow,
Blue, green and indigo,
What’s the missing colour
That is in a rainbow?
(Answer: red)
• The player has to guess the answer and pick up as many red rubber bands with a pencil. The game leader could fix a time limit for the game.
• The player who picks the maximum number of rubber bands of the correct colour from riddles or cryptic clues read out by the game-leader is the winner.

The games described in this article can be played with either small or large groups of players with minimum resources. There are however, like in all other group activities, a few challenges like finding the time, getting a dynamic game leader, forming groups, locating a venue, etc. However, if teachers make non-digital games a part of their learning curve, then their dependence on digital devices would surely wane and creative, fun, and ‘real’ interactions would assume an important role in their day-to-day life and work.

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.